Summer Heat
by Nyaa-Neko
Summary: Risa, a girl who doesn't want to be a trainer. Heat, a cyndaquil who won't accept anything less than being the Johto champion. One summer to get the Hive Badge. But what happens when Risa discovers an ancient, evil book halfway through?
1. Heat On

Summer Heat

Chapter 1: Heat On

Risa Miyamoto tightened her grip on her backpack's straps as she stood in front of Professor Elm's laboratory. The twelve-year-old narrowed her grey eyes, glaring at much more than the cream-colored giant building, the size of which easily put every single other building in the tiny Littleroot Town to shame. She sighed, squinting up at the sky as a small flock of Pidgey flew overhead. The whole slightly nearsighted thing bothered her, especially since it would only worsen as she aged, but glasses still seemed too stupid looking. The girl unconsciously ran her hand through her tan hair, which she had pulled into two high pigtails that fell a little past her shoulders. Although she didn't actually _want_ to go on this journey, she didn't want to walk into the lab with Pidgey droppings in her hair.

Good impressions were, well, good, for lack of a better word. But what could one expect from a girl just one trimester into middle school? However, one should be able to expect more from Risa Miyamoto, one of the few who would rather stay in school than go on a journey full of scary, gross, mean, and overly-competitive people AND Pokemon.

Plus, her new teachers decided to assign a colossal amount of homework over the summer vacation. The fact that Risa had a small shred of talent in the area of academics didn't exactly help her with it-that was the only reason her parents decided she should go on the journey. They thought that she could handle the homework and the journey, at least until she won two badges (or ran out of time). Then she could go home.

The preteen slowly moved her right hand towards the knob of the door, pausing to look down at herself. Pale pink short sleeved-T shirt, check. Light green capris, check. Folded-over white socks, check. Grey tennis shoes, check. Filled light blue backpack, check.

Will to actually go through with the journey...yeah. No check there.

Nevertheless, she twisted her hand, pulled the heavy wooden door open, and walked inside.

"Hello? Professor Elm?" She called, her high, little-girl voice reverberating through the devoid-of-anything-one-might-find-in-a-laboratory entry room. "Anybody? I'm here for my appointment-eep!" Risa dashed to her left as a strange-looking, four-legged, seemingly-two-headed thing lunged at her. Her left hand shot out to break her fall as she hit the floor with a loud thud. The girl winced, holding her throbbing wrist. Slowly, she turned to look at her attacker as she edged up against the wall.

"Farin! Down!" The strange Pokemon snorted, and reared up on its hind legs. Quite obviously, it seemed angry at the fact that some idiot would even _think_ to put a closed door in its way. A man, the owner of the voice, ran into the room with a small, mostly blue-and-quite sphere in his hands. "Return!" The Pokemon, Farin, opened his mouth and made a roar-like sound before disappearing into the ball the professor held.

Risa just sat with her back up against the wall, twitching slightly. "W-w-wha-"

The man, a tall, young-ish man with short brown hair looked down at her as he put the Farin-filled Great Ball into one of his laboratory coat's pockets. "Oh, I'm sorry, here, let me help you up." With a smile on his glasses-sporting face, he held out a hand to the girl. She whimpered, grabbed it, and he pulled her up to her feet. "That Girafarig...he's a wild one. Ever since his trainer disappeared, and he was sent here from Birch's laboratory in Hoenn because of a fire..." The man shook his head.

The about-to-be-a-trainer just quivered. _That_ was how a trained Pokemon acted? Even more reason to stay home and not travel around with _six_ of them for two months!

"Anyway, from the looks of you..." he looked her up and down. "You're Miss Miyamoto, correct? I am Professor Elm, and I study Pokemon, though you could have guessed as much. I am the official Johto starter distributor."

"Y-yeah. I'm Risa Miyamoto." She bowed, although a little shakily. "I have an appointment..."

He smiled, and led her into another room. "Ah, yes, of course. You came early, huh?"

"Well, yes, I thought it might be a good idea..." The girl stared at the new room, which had its focus set on the table in the middle (the spotlight-like overhead lighting kind of helped). On the table were two Pokeballs, each behind an open book. On the far left, however, was a closed book, and no Pokeball. "Two?"

"Ah, yes, well," the professor began as he grinned sheepishly. "You see, the other girl whose appointment was today, Mariko Amaiwa, underestimated the time it would take her to get from Blackthorn City to my laboratory by quite a lot-almost five hours. I let her see the various starters, and she and the Chikorita just sort of clicked, and she _was_ here first, and then I got an email from a colleague of mine..." he trailed off, realizing he was rambling. "So I let her take the Chikorita to go run an errand for me, and she and the Chikorita got along so well I let her keep him. I hope you weren't set on having a Chikorita." He blinked. "If you really want a grass-type, there are quite a few Hoppip and Bellsprout on the routes from here to Violet City, so you could catch one of them. They are quite good, you know, with enough training-"

"No, that's okay," Risa said softly, peering down at the respective books for each of the two remaining Pokeballs. The blue one, in front of the Pokeball with the water-emblem sticker, was open to a full color photo of a Totodile performing a Water Gun, and some various statistics. The red one, in front of the Pokeball with the fire-emblem sticker, revealed a full color diagram of the anatomy, along with a detailed description of the various flame glands.

She flipped through each of the books, glancing at the descriptions of each of the two remaining starter Pokemon.

"Totodiles are often hyper? I don't want that. And Cyndaquils are very nice," she muttered to herself.

Staring at the various chapters, Risa failed to notice that Professor Elm told her he had to go out for a little while to deal with a rambunctious Heracross, and left her a Pokedex on the table.

When she looked up, she felt worried when she saw no one. "Well, maybe..." she whispered to herself as she looked down at the Pokedex. Flipping it open, she saw it already had all of the information about her inside, with her as having no Pokemon registered as seen, caught, or translated. "Translated?"

Risa stared at the underside of the Pokedex cover, and saw a small circular indentation with what looked to be a small bit of metal in the center, similar to a USB port. Picking up one of the Pokeballs absentmindedly, she placed it inside the indentation.

Suddenly, she heard a click, and a sound quite like the sound of a computer booting up. She froze, wondering if she did something wrong, and if the professor was going to get angry with her.

Risa really, really, really wanted to avoid that.

But one excruciatingly long minute later, the computer sounds stopped, and Risa felt like she could breathe freely again. Which, in fact, was a very good thing, since the lack of deep enough breaths from the feeling like she couldn't move were making her a little dizzy.

The girl quickly took the Pokeball out of the indentation, and placed it back down on the table. However, her eyes were glued to the screen, so she failed to notice that she placed the Pokeball rather close to the edge of the table, and also failed to notice it wobbling dangerously.

Her grey eyes widened as she read the new information on the screen. It only had three sentences of text, but they still made her feel slightly sick inside.

"Zero Pokemon seen. One Pokemon caught. One Pokemon translated." Risa barely raised her voice above a whisper as she read the text out loud to herself. "Oh no...what have I done?"

But before she could fully ponder what she, in fact, had actually done, the precariously placed Pokeball toppled over the edge of the wooden table, bounced off the cold, white-tiled floor, and opened up, revealing a glowing white figure.

Risa quickly looked back at the table, and noticed only the Pokeball with the water sticker still remained. Whipping her head back to the Pokemon on the floor, she noticed that it stood next to a now-empty Pokeball with a flame sticker.

And sitting in front of her was a real, life Cyndaquil, straight from the pages of the book she had flipped through minutes before.

Only, instead of sleeping, this one was wide awake.

"Eep!" Risa squeaked, brandishing her Pokedex. She hadn't actually done that consciously, rather, seeing the Cyndaquil in person (or, Pokemon) surprised her, and the only "weapon" with which to protect herself was a small, metal, encyclopedia-like handheld computer.

The Pokedex whirled into action, first by bringing up her "seen" count to one. Then, she heard a beep, and a picture of a Cyndaquil flashed onto the screen, followed by a voice. "Cyndaquil," it began. "The fire mouse Pokemon. The fire that spouts from its back burns hottest when it is angry. The flaring flames intimidate foes."

Then it proceeded to read off the statistics of the Cyndaquil in front of Risa, and notified her that it was only set to the "crystal" set of information, and that more information about Cyndaquil could be viewed later.

But she wasn't really paying much attention anymore.

"Um...hi?" She mumbled, bowing. "Um...so, I guess you're my first Pokemon, and-"

"_And what?_" He cut in, rising onto his hind legs. "_So you're my trainer? Well, I gotta tell you, you don't look like much._"

"Um, w-what?"

"_I expected somebody tougher. But I guess you'll have to do._" He hopped over to her, and Risa felt the squinty little eyes taking her in, and evaluating her. "_Now then, let's go. We should really start. That stupid Chikorita's got a head start! We don't want his trainer to beat us to the first badge right? We gotta leave NOW!_"

"Y-you can talk!" Risa exclaimed, still a bit stunned to respond to what the Cyndaquil in front of her was actually talking _about_. "I can understand you!"

The small fire-type scoffed. "_Duh. Well, let's go! We aren't going to become the champion of the Johto League by just standing in that idiot professor's office! LET'S GO! MOVE MOVE MOOOOVE!_"

With that, he reached out with his clawed little front paws, grabbed onto her socks, and started towing her out the door.

"W-wait! We should wait for the professor-" the new trainer protested weakly, while inside wondering why she wasn't strong enough to not be dragged off by a Pokemon much shorter and lighter than her. "I think we should really wait-"

"_NO! NO WAITING! WE LEAVE NOW!_" He ordered, finally getting her out the open front door. "_That Professor What's-his-face isn't _that _stupid. He'll figure it out on his own._ _Maybe._"

Then they were completely out the door, and walking out towards the edge of Littleroot Town.

Risa simply sighed, and followed the marching Cyndaquil. She knew defeat when she saw it. _I really wanted a Pokemon that wasn't so...demanding. I hope this means he isn't competitive, but that seems like a bit of a hopeless wish._ She looked over at him. _I'm afraid to tell him that we're either stopping at the end of my summer vacation, or two badges, whichever comes first._

"Um...so, what's your name?" She asked meekly, jogging a bit to catch up with him.

"_I don't have one. You're supposed to give me one,_ _idiot,_" he retorted, glaring up at her. Small embers seemed to glow on his back. "_And give me a good one! One that will make my opponents cower at my feet! So get on with it. Name me!_"

"You're too short for anybody to cower," Risa mumbled under her breath.

"_What was that, idiot?_"

"N-nothing. I-I just said...um...maybe...a good name would be..." she trailed off, looking away from her Pokemon. "Maybe...hi...hiii...hiito...Heat?"

He stopped. "_What? 'Heat'? THAT'S the best you could come up with?_"

She twitched. "I guess I could think of another-"

But then the Pokedex beeped again in Risa's hand (she hadn't had time to put it away), and she glanced at it.

"Name registered," it reported in its toneless computer voice.

"_So-so-so that's my NAME now? It's PERMANENT?_" The newly named Cyndaquil shrieked.

Risa shrugged. "I think it's a pretty good name. I don't see why you have to get so mad about it," she shot back, though extremely weakly.

Heat roared, and the flames on his back shot up. "_This is horrible? Who's going to bow down to Heat, the champion-defeating Typhlosion? We gotta find whoever the Name Rater-face is in this stupid region, because I DEMAND A RECOUNT!_"

"Recount?" The trainer mused. "I don't think that's really the right word...maybe you want 'rename.'"

"_DOES IT LOOK LIKE I CARE?_"

Risa whimpered, though was able to peep out, "apparently."

And so, Risa Miyamoto stepped out of Littleroot Town, accompanied only by a rather angry Cyndaquil.

Thirty-two days to go.

_I think I can last that long without getting burnt up by this guy, _Risa thought without much enthusiasm, as Heat ranted on and on about the inadequacy of his new trainer. _At least he doesn't know Ember yet._

* * *

**Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon. Pokemon is owned by Nintendo, Game Freak, The Pokemon Company, Satoshi Taijiri, and any other respective and legal owners.**

**Author's Notes: Well, here ya'll go. The first chapter of what I hope to be a frequently-updated story. At least I have a good idea of where this will go, and I don't have to think up too much in terms of plot ideas for the next few chapters. So…that might mean that you won't have to wait a month to see what happens next! Yeah…heheheh…and don't worry. If you read Flying Solo…I WILL update soon. Really. I mean it. (Maybe…heheheh…)**

**So, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of Summer Heat. Please leave a review and tell me what you liked and didn't like. If you have an account, I'll try to respond to your review, and if you don't, but leave an email address, there's a chance I'll respond to your review via email. But yeah…I hope you look forward to the next chapter!**


	2. Steam

Chapter 2: Steam

The two trudged along the route to Cherrygrove City, shrouded in a strange silence.

Then, (and some may see it as unfortunate) of course, it was broken.

"_Hey idiot-_"

"I-I have a name, y-you know," Risa stuttered. It was beginning to annoy her enough for her to interrupt about it, though apparently not enough to make her stop stuttering. "It's Risa. Risa Miyamoto."

"_Risa Miyamoto? Sounds lame,_" Heat scoffed, waddling around a small rock. "_Maybe even lamer than my name._ _Which, by the way, is pretty lame._"

The tan-haired trainer rolled her grey eyes. "So you keep saying." They trudged along the sandy path. "Hey, so..."

The Cyndaquil groaned. "_Where are all the Pokemon? I gotta beat somebody! I want a fight! A fight! I need to beat something! SOMEBODY CHALLENGE US!_"

Risa squeaked. "N-no! Heat, that was too loud! Somebody probably heard you!"

He looked at her like she had only one brain cell (if she had none, she couldn't have said anything, now could she?). "_That was the whole point. I _want _somebody to hear me. Preferably a trainer, so they can challenge us to a battle, so I can defeat their Pokemon!_"

His trainer looked a bit uncomfortable at this thought. "I've never done any serious battling though. If somebody came and challenged us, we'd probably-"

"SO!" Even Heat jumped at this booming voice from behind them. "Risa Miyamoto of Littleroot Town! Feeling a bit overconfident, are we?"

The trainer addressed turned around slowly, but all she saw was a tree and a few bushes. "Uh..."

She and Heat sort of stared at the bushes expectantly, but for a few minutes, nothing actually happened.

"_Challenger!_" Heat finally called, able to take the silence, and lack of battle, no longer. "_Show yourself! And do it NOW!_"

"Heat, don't be so pushy," Risa hissed, albeit weakly.

Then they waited for a few more moments.

Finally, the bushes rustled, and with a rather high-pitched "ohmygoshI'mfalling," a boy tumbled out of the foliage.

Risa simply stared at the boy, who didn't look much older than she was. He looked rather scruffy, which slightly surprised Risa. She reasoned that if he was traveling on Route 29 (and still rather near Littleroot Town), he couldn't have been a trainer for long, and therefore, couldn't have been traveling for a long time. This gave reason for her to be confused as to why he looked so scruffy-wouldn't he have wanted to look good when he left home?

Then she glanced at his clothes (her mind worked sort of slowly, no?). He wore an almost stereotypical boy's trainer outfit: long, baggy tan cargo shorts, a black shirt with a red-and-grey sweatshirt (with, of course, a Pokeball logo as the main print) over it, white socks, and grey tennis shoes. All had a sort of dirtied look to them, as if he had been running on (and rolling in) dirt paths and scrambling through bushes...which seemed as likely a back story to Risa as any.

Suddenly, he jumped up, and Risa saw to her dismay that he stood over a head taller than she did. Of course, his spiky, dark brown hair didn't help at all-it added a few extra centimeters. His light brown eyes narrowed at her, and his mouth turned into a sneer.

"So, you think you can outsmart Ichiro Tanimura with your diabolically-planned hiding behind thick bushes, huh?" The boy, apparently named Ichiro, accused.

Risa held her hands up in defense. "W-we're not hiding...s-see, we're on the path-"

"Do not attempt to confuse me with your excuses!" Ichiro almost shouted, turning his glare on Heat. "I have a score to settle with you-you took the Cyndaquil!"

The other trainer blinked. "I-I'm sorry, did you w-want a Cynda-"

"OF COURSE I WANTED THE CYNDAQUIL!" He half-growled-half-shouted. "I can't have a good Journey without having my rival start out with the Pokemon with the advantage!"

Risa blinked again, clearly confused. "H-huh?"

Ichiro groaned, then rolled his eyes. He thought for a moment, then put his hands on his hips and sighed. "You just don't get it, do you?"

"W-what?"

He paused, and looked her over. "What grade are you in-fifth?"

"No!" Risa whined. "I'm in seventh grade! I'm a first year student at Hoshiwa Middle School in Littleroot Town! I'm just short!"

Ichiro chuckled under his breath. "You mean you're the same age as me, but you don't get it?"

"Get what?"

"The Journey."

"_That's very strange. It's like you can hear the capital letter, if you're talking in English. Or maybe...if it's Japanese..._" someone said in a serene, calm female tone (as now all three present individuals jumped in surprise at the new voice). "_Calligraphy. Nice, long strokes. With jet-black ink...very little water diluting it._"

All eyes swiveled onto a Totodile that just popped out of a Pokeball on Ichiro's belt. "_Such dark ink...Tanimura, why do you speak with such darkness?_"

"I still don't get what you're talking about," Ichiro grumbled at what appeared to be the starter he was forced to choose.

Risa pointed at the Totodile. "So that's..."

"Totodile. I had to get her 'cause you took the Cyndaquil!"

"Um...okay?"

"Argh! No, it's not okay!" The boy groaned, yanking his spiky hair in frustration. "YOU were supposed to take the stronger one! Ugh, if it wasn't for that stupid robbery, I'd have gotten a-" He paused. "No, wait a sec..." Then he promptly began muttering to himself while staring blankly at the ground.

Risa was able to catch words such as "Cyndaquil," "red hair," and "carry the four," but that pretty much kept her in the dark of what her new "friend" decided to start pondering.

Before the little trainer girl could interrupt, he swung around to face her, his face almost livid. "No wait! I got it wrong! The robber-dude had nothing to do with it...it was that sleeping-in rule! Yeah!"

"S-sleeping in-"

Ichiro scoffed, cutting her off. "Duh, it's part of The Journey? Anyways, since you're being stubborn and not giving up the Cyndaquil-" Risa peeped that she never said anything, but Ichiro kept ranting, "I'll just have to fight you! After all, we're rivals, so-"

"Rivals?" The present human female squeaked. "No, wait, I-"

"_All right!_" Heat exclaimed, jumping forward. His back burst into flames with a soft fizz, and the spiky fire-needles sparkled in the noontime sunlight. The squinty eyes of the black Pokemon glared at the nameless Totodile, preparing for a confrontation. "_Hey, Idiot, looks like we got us a rival! Get ready to battle, 'cuz we're gonna whip your-_"

"Heat!" Risa pleaded in a whiny tone, her hands balling up in protest. "Please don't, we have to-"

"I accept your challenge!" Ichiro boomed, striking a pose that failed miserably as being threatening.

"_So then...it seems that we will soon be at each other's necks, Master of Fire,_" the still unnamed Totodile calmly informed the Cyndaquil. The said Cyndaquil gave his in-the-near-future opponent a confused look, and promptly ignited his tail-flames.

"_I have a name! And it's not 'Master of Fire.' There's no WAY I'd stand for a stupid name...like..._" Heat paused. "_Well, at least my name isn't 'Master of Fire.' That sounds too boastful for the future champion Pokemon. People might think I'm too confident, or something._"

Before Risa could say or even think anything in response to that, Ichiro suddenly butted in with a frantic "what's your name?" Although, the way he shouted it, it was more of a "WHAT'S YOUR NAME?" or even a "WHAT'SYOURNAME?"

Heat shrugged, sitting on his two back legs. "_Heat. Stupid, but oh well._"

"Heat?" The boy mused, tapping his lip in thought. He stayed in deep thought for all of about two seconds before coming to a conclusion. "Furiizu."

"E-excuse me?" Risa asked, both confused and a little embarrassed, for Ichiro said whatever he said while staring straight at her. "Did you...sneeze...just now?"

Her apparent rival rolled his brown eyes, silently informing the surrounding world of the girl's incompetence. "No, no, no. Her _name_. My Totodile, from this day forth, shall now be known as Freeze!" He then turned to his blue mini-crocodile. "So you're Freeze now," he repeated, just in case she had not registered that fact the first time.

"_Very well._" Freeze stared up at the clouds. "_Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice..._"

Risa paused, her grey eyes staring blankly at Freeze. "But she's a water-type..."

Ichiro coughed. "That doesn't matter! The point is that our first Pokemon should be named to be opposites! And the opposite of something heating up is freezing-"

"Um, what about 'cooling down'? I thought that was the opposite..." The female trainer piped up, before seriously wishing she hadn't. Ichiro shouted something that didn't sound like a real word, before promptly telling his rival that, "'Freeze' sounds better".

"Anyways," Ichiro began, glaring at both Risa and Heat simultaneously (quite a feat, considering they were about three meters apart). "You're just tryin' to distract me! Scared, are you? Well, I won't let it go on. We're fighting…and since I'm a nice, honorable trainer, I must let you go first." He glanced at Freeze, waving his grubby hand out towards the makeshift battlefield. "So get out there and get hit, or whatever."

"_As you wish, Tanimura,_" Freeze replied in a soothing tone, which clashed with her comical waddle. She wasn't built for grace on land, apparently. "_Well, Master of Fire, it looks as if our first great battle shall now commence._"

Heat smirked, his back-flame surging into the air. "_Yeah! That's what I'm talkin' about!_" He lunged out to face Freeze, glaring her down with a fiery intensity all but lost on her serene face. "_Let's get this thing started!_"

A pause. Ichiro glanced across the path-turned-battlegrounds at his opponent. After Risa stared blankly back, he decided to offer some of his selfless advice. "You're s'pposed to attack."

"Oh!" Risa gasped, startled that she forgot to take her turn. Glancing out toward her Pokemon, she tried to remember every single battle study class she'd taken, and work it into some sort of strategy.

"Heat!" She squeaked in a very unconfident yelp. "Use _Tackle!_"

Heat grumbled a bit about unimpressive attacks before lunging forward. He twisted at the last moment so his flank slammed into Freeze's stomach…and kind of squished his back right foot. Yelping in surprise and pain, he hopped back over to Risa's side, blowing on his foot. "_That hurt! Why'd you make me _do _that?_"

The Totodile, meanwhile, was able to gain her breath back, offering a helpful, "_It seems as if your Tackle is a double-edged sword. Maybe all attacks, in reality, hurt the attackers as well…interesting…_"

Ichiro ignored Freeze's comment, folding his arms across his already beat-up red-and-grey sweatshirt in a confident pose. "Heh! Looks as if this battle's in the _bag!_ Freeze!" His miniature crocodile straightened, preparing to hear her first command. "Use…um…Scratch!"

The reptile nodded, raising her claws in preparation. She then did a sort of fast waddle forward, and whipped the claws across Heat's unprotected face. Finishing her attack with an impromptu whack at his side with her tail, she leapt back over to her trainer. A small smile graced her large jaw. "_I seem to have returned unscathed._"

Heat glared at her, anger clouding his mind. Even though he had only two official attacks to work with, he lost all ideas of strategy and tactics, instead opting for a lunge forward (as well as an intelligible, yet menacing, shouted threat).

Freeze noticed him midair, and quickly used her tail as a baseball bat, swinging it around to intercept his flying body. The collision knocked him in a haphazard arc away from his target and into the bushes. With a disgruntled "_oof!"_ he reappeared, dazed, at the base of a thorny old plant.

The boy trainer saw an opening in Risa's rock-hard defenses. Flailing his arm outward in a commanding pose, he ordered his final, devastating blow. "Freeze! SCRATCH!"

The toothy water-type lunged forward, both claws raised. She landed before the echidna, slashing her arms down onto his slightly furry body.

He gave a final "_owch_" before shuddering, then lying still.

Risa blinked her dull grey eyes. Heat wasn't moving…that wasn't like him…or was it? She'd really only known him for a couple hours, tops.

Ichiro laughed. "Hah! You, Risa Miyamoto, you thought you had me beat!" He froze in his victory pose, waiting for Risa to give some snide remark, something to make his The Journey: First Battle complete.

But nothing came.

Frowning and scuffing his sneaker against the dirt path, he gave Risa a sideways glance. "Um, aren't you going to say something?"

The girl sighed sadly. "He…he went down so _fast_," she mumbled, still a bit frozen in shock. She fumbled around in her backpack for some sort of healing item, her hands feeling numb. "Heat went down…really, really fast…"

Freeze looked up at Ichiro, waddling away from her fallen nemesis. "_Perhaps it is best if we leave. Maybe the flame has not risen a high enough heat to simply turn the water to steam…it seems to have been doused out. We should not attempt to drown the ashes._"

This didn't help. Risa blinked back tears of…something as she grasped at a reviving potion, and then stumbled over to her Pokemon. Lifting his head, she poured the Revive down his throat.

Ichiro looked a bit uncomfortable, and grabbed his Pokeball. Mumbling something about "yeah, well, it was an easy win, 'cause of the type advantage; not honorable, or anything" he returned Freeze to the sphere from which she came. He then coughed out a goodbye, and fast-walked down the road toward Cherrygrove City.

A short while later, the tiny fire-type sputtered into consciousness, though still coughing weakly. He glared up at Risa. "_We _lost?"

Risa sniffed, looking away from his intense glare. "S-sorry…"

The Pokemon sighed dejectedly. "_Whatever…that stupid Totodile must have cheated, or something…_"

"Or something…" Risa agreed sadly. Neither wanted to actually mention anything like the truth. The horrible, horrible truth.

They lost. Not because they were victims of dishonorable fighting, but simply because they weren't good enough to win against somebody of their level.

After sitting together for a long while, Risa finally looked up at the sky. _Is this what the whole journey is going to be like?_

She didn't like it, if it was.

32 days left…she just hoped that didn't mean 32 more extremely quick losses.

* * *

Disclaimer: Pokemon does not belong to me. It belongs to Satoshi Tajiri, Gamefreak, Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, and any other respective legal owners. However, all of the characters in this are the products of my imagination, so I guess I own them. So if you steal them, I will set Heat on you. So there.

Author's Note:Whoohoo! I had this half-written for way too long a time…but I finally just sat down and wrote the rest of it. I guess it got a little emo at the end…oh well. It's done, and that's all that matters. Heheh…the third chapter should go up…quicker. (Hopefully.)


	3. Unlit Matches

Chapter 3: Unlit Matches

Risa looked down at her teammate as they entered the cherry-colored city in silence. Biting her lip, she wondered if their failure at battling would hinder any chance of having fun on her adventure.

It wasn't as if she _wanted _or _expected _to have fun – oh no, no, no. The little tan-haired preteen expected to have a lousy time at best. But she wanted it to still be tolerable-lousy, not lousy-lousy.

"Um, so…" she began, not really sure of what to say to her echidna Pokemon. "Um…a-are you feeling better? After that battle that you, um, well…"

And as if to add insult to injury, "that battle" didn't even necessarily refer to their loss against Ichiro and Freeze – oh, no. After she revived Heat, they decided it would make sense to battle some wild Pokemon along the route before going up against another trainer. So they found a wild Sentret, Heat went out with a victory in his mind…and a defeat followed.

Risa used another revive after the Sentret scampered off, and they found a Pidgey – and Heat lost to that, too.

Then she realized she had no more revives with her, freaked out, and almost cried. Luckily, Heat managed to wake up on his own, after which Risa almost drowned him with frantic applications of multiple potions.

The little fire-type glared up at her from behind squinty eyes. "_I'm perfectly _fine, _idiot. Pokemon have natural healing abilities that kick in even if you completely fail at healing 'em. Like, if you were too stupid to remember potions-_"

"B-but I r-remembered potions! I g-gave you, like, two of them!"

"_But that was only _after _I regained consciousness. ON MY OWN. See? You obviously are too much of an idiot to remember to bring more revives or something. Duh! Get with the program, Risa! You're gonna have to be more on top of all of this if you ever want to make it to the championships!_" He glared at her one more time before focusing on walking. Obviously, the fact that Heat lost to all three Pokemon didn't factor into his argument.

Risa bit her lip, tightening her hold on her grey backpack straps. Should she tell him her plan? Her plan to either quit at the end of the summer or quit after the second badge, depending on whichever came quicker…she felt a bit queasy about the whole thing. Not her plan, but the telling of Heat about said quitting plan.

Honestly, she really didn't want to tick off something that ignited its backside every time it got angry.

The two began to ignore each other, passing the gateway into the city in silence. All at once, the sights and sounds (and smells) of the pink-flavored city poured over the pair. Both noticed the standard pink roofs, the cherry trees (though not in bloom), the cheery air, and the general suburban-urban feel. This city was no Goldenrod, of course; yet Risa felt a sort of city-type energy flowing through it that New Bark Town sincerely lacked.

She almost immediately felt a bit more upbeat as they turned the corner into a less residential area. Grinning, she swiftly flicked her grey-eyed gaze from a soft-serve ice cream vendor, to the group of stylishly-clothed high-school aged girls walking their Houndooms, to the middle-aged woman talking excitedly into her cell phone as she window-shopped, to the shops themselves. Boutiques, bakeries, specialty stores…nothing she really needed, but everything she wanted to see.

The preteen stepped over to stare into a breeder's store. Grinning girlishly, she melted at the sight of two Meowth kittens playing in a little pen by the window.

"_You know those things cost millions or whatever,_" Heat muttered, cutting into her cute-filled fantasy. Risa glared at him, though avoided making eye contact. "_They won't do any good in an arena, either. They're pets, not champion material – not like me! I'm bred for battling, and they're bred for cutesy stuff. Who you gonna pick?_"

Risa mumbled, "the cute one," but just shrugged it off when Heat asked what she said.

They continued to walk along the sidewalk for a few blocks, following the signs to the Pokemon Center. It, and the PokeMart next door, welcomed her with cheery (yet standard) pink roofs and the smell of good food (and medicine) inside.

"Welcome to the Cherrygrove City Pokemon Center!" Risa blinked dazedly at the cheery nurse. Before her stood an olive-haired, pudgy, squinty-eyed older woman, wearing the standard apron of the Pokemon Center attire. Even with her aura of happiness and kindness "May I heal your Pokemon for you, miss?"

Risa nodded, mumbling out a soft "sure" before returning Heat to his Pokeball. She handed over the filled ball with a tiny little squeak, then dashed over to the waiting area as her single Pokemon went through the healing machines. The computer screen along one side of the waiting room tracked Heat's progress through the healing cycle, and the estimated time of completion appeared to be just over ten minutes.

"I guess I have some time to relax," Risa muttered as she found an empty spot on one of the slightly threadbare, slightly stained creamy orange couches open for trainers. She plopped herself down on the couch, slightly startling the drowsy looking teenage trainer on the opposite end. The boy looked up for a moment, blinking slowly as his bleary orange eyes focused on Risa's small frame, and then let his head fall back against the couch once he deemed Risa unimportant.

Honestly, Risa didn't mind. Talking to strangers wasn't exactly her idea of a good time.

However, she did have about ten minutes before she had to pick up Heat's Pokeball, and while staring into space for the full duration of those minutes would have been a perfectly acceptable way to spend them, Risa wanted to take full advantage of the lack of stressful Heat chatter. She glanced around the waiting room, focusing her attention on a small bookcase of battered books for trainer use inside the room. Making sure not to wake the sleeping teen to her right, she got up, crossed the room, and began to examine the spines of the books.

"'Strategies for the Violet City Gym'," Risa read as she glanced at a rather thick purple-covered book. "That should be useful." Her thin fingers grabbed at the spine, pulling it forcefully out of the bookcase. A couple other books fell together due to the sudden lack of structural integrity, but Risa didn't notice as she began to flip through the tome.

Once she sat back down on the couch, she had already gathered enough information to learn that she would probably have a really tough time at the gym.

There were two main problems with her current strategy, which was to train along the way to Violet City, then take a day or two to train Heat once they arrived before going to challenge Falkner. She assumed that beginner's luck or karma would bring them to victory.

Now she wasn't so sure. (Well, she never exactly was, but now she was _really_ not so sure.)

The first main problem was that Falkner fought with two Pokemon, one after the other. Challengers were allowed to use _up to two_ Pokemon to fight his team, which meant that using only one Pokemon was okay…but it didn't mean he would reduce his team to one Pokemon. Heat would have to fight and defeat two Pokemon, one right after the other. Falkner would also probably send out his stronger Pokemon second, which would cause Heat to fight the stronger bird after being tired and injured from fighting the first.

Not to mention the fact that, while Heat didn't have any type disadvantages, he didn't really have any advantages either. She couldn't even depend on his boosted fire offensives because, as of the current moment, Heat didn't know any fire attacks.

Risa groaned, leaning back against the couch. She really didn't want to catch another Pokemon – she could barely handle Heat. On the other hand, she really wanted to win against Falkner the first time around, because that would make her whole trip way more efficient. A more efficient trip would result in the winning of both the Zephyr Badge and the Hive Badge happen much sooner, which would in turn allow Risa to go home earlier.

"What am I gonna do?" she muttered, rubbing her forehead with her hand as if that would magically force an idea into the gray matter up there.

She remained like that for a full minute until she felt a finger jabbing itself against her shoulder. Her gray eyes flicked open to see the teenage boy poking her, a slightly bored expression on his face. A quick glance behind him showed that the other boy, the younger one with orange eyes, had left.

"Hey," he grunted, ceasing his poking.

Risa squeaked, pulling away. "Um, hello." What did he want?

"You're Risa, right?"

"Um, yeah." How did he know that? What was going on?

He gestured towards the Pokemon Center counter with a tip of his head. "I think your Pokemon's done."

"…Oh! Oh, um, thanks," Risa mumbled as she jumped up and scurried over to the counter, muttering her apologies to the attendant for making her wait.

At least it meant the teenage boy had nothing real to do with her – he'd just heard her name over the intercom, and put two-and-two together…since, you know, they were the only two in the waiting room, and his name sure wasn't Risa Miyamoto.

He nodded to her as she left, but she didn't return the favor. Risa wasn't the best person with strangers; she operated under a strict "you don't do anything to me, I stay far away from you" mentality.

Once outside, she noted that it was already the early evening – she could have sworn it was much earlier when they arrived at Cherrygrove City. Sighing, she turned around and walked back into the Pokemon Center to inquire about spending the night in their attached trainer's hostel. While she was perfectly fine with spending the night outside, as she did have basic camping equipment with her, Risa would have always chosen to sleep indoors if given the option.

And since she had the option, she made the executive decision that she and Heat would not be tackling Route 30 until at least the next day.

* * *

Due to some strange work of fate, Risa ended up in a single room. Sure, it was in the attic, was barely larger than the bed it contained, had a grimy window she would never be able to squeeze through in the event of some natural disaster, but at least she had some privacy.

Heat wasn't so thrilled with it.

"_I can't breathe in here,_" he groaned as soon as Risa released him. "_And isn't it stupid to have me out of my Pokeball? I could light the room on fire._"

Risa shrugged and looked at the ceiling from her spot on the bed. "I just, I dunno, thought you might want some air."

Heat glared at her. "_The air stinks in here. If I flare up,_" he began, wiggling his back legs to show he was referring to his currently unlit fire tail, "_I'll just use up all the air with that. Then you'll die from suffocating._"

The girl stared at him. "W-what?"

The Cyndaquil rolled his squinty eyes. "_It's not like I care about you, or anything,_" he mumbled. "_I just don't want to sleep here. I'll go back in my Pokeball. See you in the morning – and we'd better be leaving Cherrygrove!_" Then, without another word, he disappeared in a red flash back into the sterile confinement of his holding capsule.

His trainer sighed, pulled off her clothes and replaced them with her pajamas, then curled up in bed.

It didn't surprise her that she didn't get much sleep that night.

Unfortunately for Heat, Risa had a few things she wanted to take care of in the city before they headed out to the route. Begrudgingly, he followed her around as she replaced her healing supplies at the PokeMart (careful to stock up on extra revives), bought some lunch at a café as an attempted nice gesture to her Pokemon (which Heat scorned because it meant they were wasting time in the city), and stopped back at the Pokemon Center to make a phone call.

"I swear, Heat, we're leaving after this. I just want to call my mom and tell her where I am," she said as they waited in line for the videophones. Heat snorted angrily, but said nothing.

Finally one of the phones freed up, and Risa walked over, punching in her mother's studio phone number. Her mother, Noriko Miyamoto, owned New Bark Town's only dance studio, and usually spent her time choreographing new routines or helping the office staff when not teaching classes, so Risa had some time to talk to her face-to-face between her mother's classes. Now was one of those times, and Risa wanted to make the most of it.

"Mom?" Risa squeaked as her mother's tan face appeared on the screen.

"Risa!" Noriko's face brightened as she saw the girl on the other end. "Honey! How are you? It's so good to see you!"

"Y-yeah, I'm happy to see you, too, Mom," she muttered, feeling a slight pull in her chest. Even though she only left home for the summer and had been gone for a little over a day, Risa only just then realized she was feeling homesick. What she wouldn't give for her mother's smile and her father's home cooking. "I was just calling to check in…I, um, I'm at Cherrygrove. I'm about to leave, though. And, um, you know…walk up north. To Violet City."

Noriko smiled, her green eyes crinkling the way they always did. "That's wonderful, Risa. How many Pokemon do you have? Did you win any battles?"

Risa looked down. "I-I s-still just have one Pokemon," she whispered sullenly. She didn't mention that they lost all three battles they fought since they paired up at Professor Elm's laboratory.

"That's fine, sweetie," Noriko replied, her voice making Risa's spirits lift a bit. "You've only just started. I'm sure you'll win your next battle. I believe in you."

This was enough to make Risa's mouth twitch into the faintest reluctant smile. "Thanks, Mom."

Behind her, one of the teenaged boys who was next in line cleared his throat, signaling to Risa that she needed to give up the videophone to the next person waiting. "Um, I gotta go, Mom. It was nice talking to you."

"You too, sweetie. I miss you."

"I miss you, too. B-bye."

And then her mother's face disappeared, and the teenager all but shoved her out of the way.

Risa then stumbled out into the afternoon sunlight, Heat trailing behind her. She looked over at him – he still had the grouchiest, meanest expression she could ever imagine for someone like him on his face.

"What's wrong?" she asked, half in a whining tone. She pulled her backpack straps down, starting to walk along the sidewalks towards the northern threshold of Cherrygrove City. "We're gonna leave now. Why're you so angry at me?"

He didn't look at her. "_You didn't tell your mom who I was._"

Risa frowned. "What?"

"_You didn't say, 'hey, Mom, this is Heat. He's my Pokemon,'_" Heat replied, using a mocking tone of voice when imitating his trainer. "_I guess this just isn't important to you like it is to me. You should introduce your future best Pokemon for when you win the Johto championships._"

Then he stopped talking, content to walk alongside the human girl for the rest of the day.

His trainer couldn't shake the feeling that she'd insulted him, but even when she tried to apologize, he just shrugged it off.

They left the city as the sun was setting to their left, and Risa reluctantly set up camp not too far from the city. She could see the glow of the city nightlife over the evergreens that obscured the horizon, and the light pollution from Cherrygrove even made to dim a few of the stars above.

"Heat?" Risa asked from inside her sleeping bag. She bought Heat a medium-sized fireproof blanket when she was in Cherrygrove, which she gave to him after she unrolled her sleeping bag. The blanket, a dull orange-red and somewhat stiff due to the fireproofing, sat unused and still folded up next to the Pokemon. "Are you not talking to me?"

He didn't reply, and soon, she could hear him snoring softly.

She sighed, unable to see how their relationship could have degraded in such a short amount of time.

Her last thought before she fell asleep was that there were thirty days left in her journey.

* * *

Disclaimer: Pokemon does not belong to me. It belongs to Satoshi Tajiri, Gamefreak, Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, and any other respective legal owners. However, all of the characters in this are the products of my imagination, so they are mine. Haha!

Author's Note:So, I basically had this chapter written up to the point where she is told her Cyndaquil is done healing for…what was it? A year? A year and a half? Anyway, I recently decided I wanted to get back into this, especially since last night I sat down at outlined the entire story. So yes, I will be updating this. Oh, and if you're wondering why everyone sounds so out of character and the writing style changes abruptly halfway through the chapter…that would be the fact that I took a year-long break in the middle. Sorry 'bout that.


	4. Snuffing Out the Flame

Chapter 4: Snuffing Out the Flame

"Okay, Heat, use Tackle!" Risa shouted, her voice not carrying quite the same way she hoped it would.

Her Cyndaquil, Heat, flexed his stubby black legs for a moment before charging the Weedle. It was the first Pokemon they'd found that day that hadn't run away when it saw them (or, in the case of the Poliwag, that they ran away from), and Heat was determined to beat it.

The Weedle, looking a bit tired from having been woken up by the ambushing Cyndaquil, squeaked as its opponent slammed into him. The bug sailed through the air, landing in a heap against a tree.

"_HAH! Take that, you little worm!_" Heat cheered as he saw the Weedle's eyes turn a little disoriented. This disorientation and increased distance allowed Heat to sidestep the Poison Sting that shot forward from the caterpillar, leaving him at the end of the turn with no damage.

Risa, however, almost fell flat on her face trying to avoid the Poison Sting herself. If Heat got poisoned it was no big deal, as she had plenty of antidotes and a few poison-cure berries with her, but Pokemon poison was much more toxic to humans. She did not need to deal with being rushed to the emergency room back in Cherrygrove on her first day out of the city.

"Tackle it again!" Risa ordered, although she figured Heat would probably do it all on his own.

Heat dashed forward, almost losing control as he crashed into the Weedle. He kicked the Pokemon before jumping away again, as he wasn't stupid enough to be in close range in case the caterpillar used Poison Sting again.

It didn't – it keeled over, twitched a bit, and then was still.

Heat stared at it.

Risa stared at it, then looked at her Pokemon.

Heat turned to look at her.

They both stared at each other.

"Um," Risa finally said, breaking the silence. "We just won."

The Cyndaquil thought for a moment, then sneezed.

A huge black cloud of smoke billowed out of his mouth and rear fire glands, covering the now-unconscious Weedle and the surrounding patch of grass in a layer of soot.

"W-what was _that_?" Risa asked, pulling out her Pokedex to try and figure out if Heat was sick or if he just learned a new attack. As she scrolled over to the information on her own Pokemon (noting that she now had a partial entry on Weedle, as the Pokedex detected the unconscious Pokemon and registered it as "seen"), Heat started laughing and blowing smoke everywhere. Some of it blew into Risa's face, getting in her lungs and eyes. "Aaagh!" She coughed and wiped her stinging eyes. "Heat, cut it out!"

"_NEVER! Ahahahah! This is AWESOME!_" Heat shouted, obviously having too much fun. "_This must be some incredibly powerful attack that I will use to defeat the Johto champion when I'm a Typhlosion!_"

Risa checked her Pokedex through squinted, still-in-pain grey eyes. "Um…actually, this is just…just Smokescreen. I-it just lowers, y-your opponent's accuracy…"

"_WHAT?_" Heat exclaimed, suddenly stopping his joyous outbreaks of smoke clouds. Apparently, they lost their charm. "_What sort of attack is THAT? It doesn't do any damage!"_

The girl shrugged, cowering a little. "It c-can be good to have attacks that do stuff like that. You know, f-for strategy. S-so you don't get hit."

"_Feh_," Heat mumbled, crossing his front legs as he sat on his hind ones. "_I don't need attacks like that. I can do just fine with just doing attacks. Beat 'em up. And then we'll _win_._"

Risa sighed, then looked up. To her horror, the Weedle was gone, leaving only a trail of soot showing its path into some thick bushes. "Heat! The Weedle's gone!"

The Cyndaquil glanced over at the bushes, bored. "_So?_"

"'So'? Heat, I thought we could catch it!" Risa explained in a whiny voice that sounded much younger and more immature than her twelve years. "It was the first Pokemon we defeated…"

"_Exactly. It's a _Weedle._ We beat a _Weedle." Heat stated as if Risa was a baby. "_They're really weak. Even when they evolve all the way into Beedril, they're still really bad Pokemon. We don't need one on our future championship team, and why waste time training one now if you're just gonna ditch it later? Just catch something better later; I don't want a bug on my championship team._"

Risa crossed her arms and pouted; if she were four years old, she would have frowned more pronouncedly and stomped her foot. "But when I was in Cherrygrove City, I _bought_ Pokeballs! Five of them! Shouldn't we at least get _someone_ else?" Obviously, in the heat of the moment, Risa forgot about her previous promise to herself to do the completely opposite; now she wanted someone else to balance out her feisty Cyndaquil.

Her Pokemon just shrugged. "_Deal with it. I'm all you're ever going to need, anyway, unless you get something good. Which you're not, you know, around here. I'm too good for this – we need something more champion-like._"

"Like what?"

"_I don't know. That's your job. You're the trainer, you figure out what you're gonna with the championship with,_" he retorted before waddling ahead along the footpath to Violet City.

It didn't take them long to realize that there were more Weedle in the bushes and grasses of Route 30 than they could ever hope to find in a lifetime.

It also didn't take them long to realize the debilitating effects of a well-aimed Poison Sting, as the fourth Weedle Heat went up against was, in fact, at a much higher level than the first three.

That fourth battle did not end at all well. Heat started out a little tired from three consecutive prior Weedle battles, the second and third being literally thirty-seven seconds removed from one another, and the Weedle he challenged came in at full strength, health, and rest.

Heat got the first attack in, sure, and it was a Tackle. Due to having a little too much fun along the way (and during the second and third Weedle battles), he managed to use up all the smoke in his system, and was unable to use the strategic Smokescreen when it really would have counted.

The opposing Weedle managed to tie Heat's neck down with a well-placed String Shot, though, and that prevented Heat from running forward and to attack the Weedle during the next turn; he spent most of his time trying to wriggle out or burn off the sticky string (while Risa urged him to try and do it faster, to which he just yelled at her for being an idiot).

Then the Weedle jabbed his poisonous barb _into Heat's head_, doing twice the amount of damage it should have. To top it all off, Heat suddenly couldn't stand up quite straight, lost quite a bit of energy, and felt nauseous.

Just as Risa realized that he contracted a battle poison condition, the Weedle managed to get in another critical-hit Poison Sting, and Heat slumped over, defeated and unconscious.

The Weedle gave Risa a sort of caterpillar-esque smirk before inching himself away into a nearby tree, where Risa swore she saw a dull glow emanate from the trees.

As if to add insult to injury, the Weedle was actually _evolving_ into his second stage, Kakuna, from his victory against Heat.

And that was how Risa found herself sitting next to an unconscious Heat, trying to get him to down the powdered revive while wondering if she should take him to the emergency room in case the poison was worse than normal.

That was also how Risa found herself returning a slowly-waking, very perturbed Heat to his Pokeball after being slowly ambushed (if there even was such a concept) by a pack of five more Weedle, and flat-out running away from the area where the poisonous caterpillars swarmed.

Risa managed to find a clearing with no tall grass, no bushes, and no overhanging tree branches in which to sit down and focus on healing Heat back up to his full battling health. They were nowhere near the end of Route 30, let alone the adjacent (albeit sorter) Route 31, and both the Cherrygrove and Violet City Pokemon Centers were well removed from their current location.

"Hey, Heat," Risa began weakly as Heat began to become consciously aware of his surroundings once more. "You, um, you feeling okay?"

Heat just glared at her through his squinty eyes. "_How do you _think_ I feel, idiot? I just got owned by a Weedle!_"

"Y-you beat the other three…"

"_Yeah, but still! I lost to a _Weedle!_ A weak, scrawny, slimy little _Weedle_!"_ Heat growled, crossing his front legs while sitting on his bottom. Surprisingly enough, his tail didn't ignite – Risa wondered if it was because of the dry dirt he was sitting on. "_You'd better never catch any bugs for our team. They're stupid. Ugh. Idiots. I hate them!_"

Risa also noted that his current arguments presented a certain feeling of déjà vu, especially when compared to the little chat they had after they beat the first Weedle and Risa wanted to catch it. Only this time, it was from the opposite end of the battlefield – Heat and Risa were the losers, not the Weedle they had just fought.

It was quite odd to hear Heat using the same arguments, though.

She ignored the comment, though, and instead held out a fistful of poison-cure berries. "Y-you should, um, eat. These things. They're gonna help you feel better. A-at least, I think, th-they will."

He glared at her, mumbled something about idiots and caterpillars and marmalade (though Risa was sure she only imagined the marmalade part), and snatched the berries out of her hand, squishing them slightly in the process. His little black paws jammed the now-smashed berries into his greedy little mouth, and he chewed angrily. "_They taste funny_," he noted, his mouth still full.

"Do you feel better?" Risa asked hopefully after he swallowed.

She received another fiery glare. "_What do you think? I just ate them. C'mon, think a little._" He groaned, then looked down at the ground. "_This is a horrible beginning to a championship journey. Oh well. At least it'll get better in the fall and stuff. I heard Professor What's-His-Face sayin' that the best trainers said their best training came during October or something like that. Or maybe it was February or whatever._" A grumbling sound emanated from his little throat. "_I shoulda listened harder…_"

Risa gulped and turned away, though Heat didn't notice, and kept chattering about training months. She knew Heat and she didn't exactly see eye-to-eye, and she knew that their relationship was getting off to a very rocky start, but she also knew that it would only degrade further if she kept that very important secret from him any longer.

Especially with him now talking about how the summer was just a warm-up run, and that they were going to do their serious training in the fall and winter. (Obviously, he didn't know anything about northern Johto winters. Or perhaps it was because he was a fire-type, and that meant the cold didn't affect him quite so much. Risa wasn't exactly sure.)

"H-heat, um," Risa began, her voice catching. She had to look away; her grey eyes glanced up at the sky. To her surprise and disdain, she found the color up above equally grey. "Th-there's something I n-need to t-tell you."

This caught his attention, bringing him away from his rant about various computer viruses the New Bark Town laboratory had to deal with recently. Once again, he glared at her. "_What?_" he hissed, obviously suspicious of her intentions.

She looked down at him, then looked away when his steely gaze met her unsteady one. "I…I'm not…"

"_Spit it out, you molasses-mouthed idiot._"

Ignoring the insult, she closed her eyes and squeaked out a fast, "I'mquittingtrainingaftertwomonths."

"…_What?"_

Risa looked at him. He hadn't caught what she said. Taking a deep breath, she said, more slowly and in a much steadier voice, "I'm going to stop training after two months. O-or after the Hive Badge…whichever…y-you know…comes first."

A few moments passed in silence.

Risa wondered if Heat was going to take it better than she thought he would or if he was still just in shock.

It turned out to be, do Risa's dismay, the latter.

"_YOU'RE GOING TO DO WHAT NOW?"_

And then, to make matters even worse, it started to rain.

Twenty-nine days left…

* * *

**Disclaimer:** Pokemon does not belong to me. It belongs to Satoshi Tajiri, Gamefreak, Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, and any other respective legal owners. All the characters in Summer Heat are a product of my imagination, and they belong to me.

**Author's Note:** I'm still trying to adjust to the fact that when I started writing this two years ago, I had a very different writing style than I do now. For this chapter, I tried to stay consistent with how I was writing it before, but I think I might switch over to a more current style in future chapters. I'm still debating this, however, since I haven't actually started writing chapter five.

Also, I couldn't think of a good chapter title for this chapter. I apologize for that.

Also also, I read up on some of Farla's comments on clichés and unoriginality, and I am painfully aware that a lot of what goes on in Summer Heat is somewhat-or-fully clichéd and/or unoriginal. But since I'm writing this mostly because I find it fun, I hope it doesn't take much away from your enjoyment (?) of reading it.

Also also also, one of my friends (Digital Skitty of ReiShine/Dark Knight "fame", if you will) and I decided to embark on "second semester senior Sinnoh adventures" starting in February, which sort of clashes a bit with continuing with this. I really want to continue with Summer Heat, though, and since I've put at least all my other fanfics on hold, hopefully I'll be able to juggle a Johto story and a Sinnoh story at once. I'll try to make the Sinnoh one with a different plot, though, I swear. (And I apologize for the insanely long author's note. It won't happen again.)


	5. Burning Cold

**Chapter 5: Burning Cold**

"_Risa!_"

Silence.

"_Risa!_"

More silence.

"…_HEY! HEY, RISA!_" Silence for only a moment, and then: "_WAKE UP, YOU IDIOOOOOOT!_"

Risa shrieked as her tent came crashing down around her as a somewhat heavy small object slammed into one of the sides. The girl panicked, kicking the object through the tent, and then trying to throw the tent off of her rather diminutive body.

It took her over a minute, as the tent became tangled around her body and one of the poles hit her on the head, but she managed to get out of it in one piece.

Her bleary eyes fell on the cyndaquil in front of her. He glared up at her. "_Y'know, you didn't have to _kick _me,_" he muttered, rubbing his sore (and unlit) backside. "_That hurt._"

"Zorry," Risa muttered, wiping her nose.

Heat stared at her through squinty eyes. "_What whazzat?_"

"I zaid I'b _zorry_," Risa snapped before sneezing. She wiped her nose again. "I hab a code."

"…_What?_"

"I hab a code."

"…_I don't know what you're –_"

"I hab a code! A _code!_"

Heat frowned for a bit, scratched something in the ground, and then paced back and forth. "_A code? Like a secret code? What sort of –"_ He stopped, looking up excitedly. "_Oh, I know what you mean! You have a cold!"_ He paused, his excitement fading. "_You have a WHAT?_"

Risa sniffled weakly. "Zorry. I tink I caught da code cuz of da rain ye-terday."

Her cyndaquil roared in anger. "_Do you know how long you stupid human kids take to get healthy from those things? Argh, I hate colds! You're going to make us take FOREVER to get to Violet City and beat the birdy-guy and get the birdy-badge and do you know what that means?_"

"I go hobe later?" Risa asked, thinking of her mother's promise that she could go home after two badges. She hoped that meant in about two weeks, if all went well.

"_No idea what 'hobe' is, but it means WE BEAT THE CHAMPION LATER!"_

Risa opened her mouth to protest, to say that the _reason_ they got stuck in the rain was because of her and Heat's little argument over her plan to quit after the Hive Badge (or after twenty-eight days, whichever came first).

Heat kicked a pebble, crossing his arms and squatting down on his two hind legs like a frustrated human toddler. "_I was going to tell you that I beat up a whole bunch of caterpies and weedles – partly because of this tree falling down and crushing them, but I still got the experience so it doesn't matter – but I guess now we gotta figure out how to get rid of your stupid cold._"

"Uh…"

The pokemon got an idea, tried to snap his fingers (or, rather, his paw), failed, and then gave up. "_I got it! Okay, so you know that Mister Pokemon guy? The weirdo who lives around here and keeps to himself and is really smart or something?_"

Risa thought for a moment. "I dunno…I tink zo…"

"_He probably knows how to make colds go away like that!_" He tried to snap his "fingers" to make a point, but ended up almost hurting himself. "_Let's go find him! Then we can get back to training!_"

"Ugh," Risa whimpered as Heat began to order her to pack up, obviously oblivious to the amount of energy she lost due to her sickness. "I wanna go _hobe._"

* * *

It took Heat and Risa a little over a day to find Mister Pokemon's house, and the campout hadn't done much to alleviate Risa's cold. Heat didn't seem to understand the concept of "rest and relaxation", which Risa kept whining to him about, and instead dragged her through areas of tall grass and shrubs so she could watch him battle all the caterpies and weedles he could find.

He figured that watching him improve his bug-fighting skills would make her feel happier and more excited about one day being the champion, and that would magically make her cold go away.

Risa, on the other hand, just wanted to go home and take some painkillers for her throbbing headache. That, and she desperately wanted Heat to stop being in denial about her plan to quit after the Hive Badge (or twenty-seven days of training, whichever came first).

But at least, she thought to herself as Heat pounded on Mister Pokemon's door, she might get something for her headache inside.

A balding man opened the door, squinting through his glasses at the young girl and her cyndaquil. "Hmm? And just who are you?"

"_Hey! Old man!_" Heat yelled from his spot on the ground. "_You're Mister Pokemon, right?_"

The man stared at him for a moment. "Are you the second cyndaquil from Elm's laboratory?"

Heat glared up at him. "_Yeah, of course I am! And I'm also gonna be the future champion's prize-winning typhlosion one day! Now let us in!_"

Mister Pokemon chuckled and held the door wide open for the cyndaquil and his trainer. "It's good to see you, Cyndaquil," he said as Heat waddled inside on his back two feet. Then he looked at Risa. "My, you're shivering! Do you have a fever?"

Risa shrugged. "I dunno. I hab a code."

"Well, now, come inside and let's get you some tea, at least. Don't worry about a thing – I'm a colleague of Professor Elm's, and my daughter's inside. She's probably only a few years older than you."

Risa stumbled inside where she internally cheered at the sight of a couch and a warm blanket next to a section of the building filled with computers and strange devices. Heat already had made his way over to some of the machines, throwing courtesy to the wind.

A young woman came out of one of the rooms in the "home" part of the building followed by a flaafy. "Oh!" she exclaimed at the sight of Risa. "You look awful!"

"Nana," Mister Pokemon asked as he ushered Risa over to the couch and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. "Can you get," he looked down at Risa.

"_Risa,_" Heat yelled from behind one of the machines. "_Her name's Risa._"

Risa nodded feebly, not really in the mood to say anything.

The man looked back at his daughter. "Can you get Risa some green tea?"

"Yeah, sure, one sec," his daughter, Nana, replied, disappearing back into the room she'd begun to come out of.

A few minutes later, Risa was very contentedly sipping on a hot cup of tea, already feeling a bit better to be inside with the blanket and the hot drink. Mister Pokemon and his daughter were seated in chairs across from her, with the flaafy in Nana's lap.

They had started to chat about some of the recent research done in the field of breeding and pokemon birth (the specialty of both Professor Elm and Mister Pokemon – or rather, as Risa learned, _Doctor_ Pokemon), and Risa actually had begun to enjoy herself despite her ailment. Unlike her pokemon partner, she actually _liked_ science and learning, and while most texts were too scholarly for her, she really did like hearing the man and his daughter talk about their research in words she could understand.

She enjoyed it, however, only while their conversation was uninterrupted.

It only took a few additional minutes for Heat's curiosity to get the better of him, and the chatting humans (and the flaafy) were interrupted by the sudden explosion of one of the machines in the laboratory.

That, and shortly after the machine exploded, part of the wall caught fire.

Everyone jumped up and ran over, Nana releasing a pokeball containing a rather irate tentacruel, annoyed to be let out without a body of water to swim in but willing enough to put out the fire with a water pulse attack.

The fire went out soon enough, and Mister-Doctor Pokemon assured Risa that it was easily replaced, but Heat took a few moments to emerge.

He all but hurled himself out of the rubble, slamming into the tentacruel's soft body and bouncing off into the "house" part of the building. (Nana's tentacruel, angry at the sudden appearance of the cyndaquil, had to be returned immediately before he attacked Heat.)

"_Risa! Guess what, guess what!_"

"…Wha…?"

"_I learned EMBER!_"

Risa stared at him dully. "You 'sploded da machine. Dat's _expensive._"

Heat ignored that last bit. "_Yeah, but I did it with EMBER!_"

Risa sighed. Her cyndaquil was a lost cause, and her headache just came back. She would have shaken her head to express her disgust, but the throbbing inside her skull kept her from doing it.

Twenty-seven days left…

* * *

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon. I do, however, own this story and all the original characters in it.

Author's note: I've decided to not capitalize most of the "Pokemon nouns" anymore, since doing so kind of annoys me. Annoyances defeat continuity in my world, at least. Oh, and I'm not abandoning this to work on _Poltergeist's_, although that's sort of taking priority over this. I'm going to try to make progress in _Summer Heat_, though, since I feel like it's kind of important that I do. That, and a lot of people seem to enjoy it! I'm glad people enjoy reading it, even though Risa doesn't save the world or anything. (And thanks to all the reviewers!)


	6. The First Flame

**Chapter 6: The First Flame**

"Thank you so much for letting us stay the night," Risa said, bowing. Luckily, her cold had all but healed, leaving her with a general sick feeling but no stuffed-up nose. "It was a really big help."

"It was our pleasure," Mister Pokemon replied.

His daughter, Nana, dropped a pokeball outside their house, releasing a tauros. "This is Taro, my tauros. He'll be happy to take you as far as Dark Cave."

The bull pokemon snorted and looked down at Risa, obviously not impressed. His three tails swished back and forth, but he let Risa approach him.

"Um," Risa said, her stomach flip-flopping. She didn't like being so close to a pokemon that was three times bigger than her and had no reason to listen to her. "N-nice to m-meet you, Taro. Um," she turned to look at Nana, "he won't throw me o-off, or anything, will he?"

Nana laughed. "Oh, no! He looks mean - and acts that way, sometimes - but he's a big softie."

Taro snorted. Apparently, he didn't agree.

Nana helped Risa onto Taro's back, handing her her things and showing her where (and where not to) hold onto the tauros's back while riding. As she did, Mister Pokemon stood next to them and told her, "once Taro gets you to Dark Cave, you will need to walk west to get to Violet City. It shouldn't take that long for you to get there on foot - maybe an hour or two without interruptions."

"Thanks," Risa said, grateful for the instructions. "Uh, how long will it take for Taro to get me there?"

Nana shrugged. "Depends on how fast he wants to run. But you should arrive at Violet City within the day no problem - probably in the early afternoon if you don't stop."

"Really?" The thought of having the whole afternoon and evening to relax in the city greatly appealed to Risa. "That's awesome! Thanks so much."

"No problem," replied the researcher's daughter, giving Taro a slap to start him running. "Bye!"

"Good luck!" Mister Pokemon called as he waved, watching Taro carry Risa and her incapsulated cyndaquil. Then he turned to his daughter and added, "I think she might need it."

---

"Um, are we stopping here?" Risa asked when Taro pulled to a halt, almost throwing her off his back.

He snorted and nodded, turning his head to glare at her.

"O-oh. Y-you want me to get down now, don't you?"

He nodded. His glare didn't let up.

"Okay. Um, how do I - let me just - AIIIEEEE!"

She landed with a thud as she slipped off the tauros, her bag landing with a similar sound next to her.

The large pokemon snorted in laughter, then turned around and ran off without any sort of ceremony or goodbye.

Risa slowly got up, rubbing her sore backside. "That really hurt," she mumbled, grabbing her things and trying to regain her composure. It was a good thing nobody was around to see her oh-so-dignified return to land from Taro's back.

She sighed, then looked around. She could see a large mountain through the trees, and just above one of the treetops Risa could see the mouth of a cave when she squinted. Turning around to face the other side, she saw the footpath take a sharp left ahead and continue on to what she hoped was the entrance to Violet City.

"Okay," she whispered to herself, mentally getting ready for the impending hike to the city. "I can do this, even if it means fighting some wild pokemon." One of the benefits to riding around, she learned, was that in addition to cutting down her travel time due to Taro's speed, she didn't have to stop and battle any pokemon. Any wild pokemon that ordinarily would have attacked jumped to the side when they saw a tauros galloping towards them.

For somebody who loved battles, like Heat, this would have been torture. For Risa, it was heaven.

Not to mention the fact that Heat didn't say a word, as he stayed put in his pokeball for the duration of the ride.

Of course, just as Risa took her first step towards Violet City, he decided to pop out of his pokeball and open his mouth.

"_That was boooring,_" he whined. "_We didn't get to battle at ALL._"

"Yes, Heat," Risa muttered. "That's the whole point. It made things really quick and easy."

Heat sat back on his hind legs and puffed an small ember in to the air. "_But that won't make me stronger, and it won't make all the wild pokemon around here know that we're gonna be champions someday. There's a whole route of pokemon that don't know they got trounced by future champs because WE DIDN'T GET TO FIGHT THEM._"

Risa sighed. "Yes, such a pity," she said, using some very uncharacteristic sarcasm. "Now, can we please start walking to Violet City? I want to get there as soon as possible."

"_But then who will we fight? We need to fight people! LOTS of people!_"

"There are gonna be trainers in the city," Risa said, shivering at the thought of a whole city wanting to challenge her. "It's a gym city, so there'll be -"

"_A gym? Really?_" Heat cut in, perking up at the thought.

"Yes, but it's -"

"_AWESOME!_" the little cyndaquil yelled, doing a small pre-victory dance at the thought. "_I can't wait! But first,_" he looked around quickly, snapping his small head back and forth. "_I gotta get psyched up for it. THERE!"_

Much to Risa's dismay, she saw that his tiny forefinger pointed straight to the cave mouth. Dark Cave.

"_Let's go there! I need to fight everybody in that cave!_"

"But wouldn't it be much nicer to go to Violet City first?"

"_No._"

"But then you could fight real trainers."

"_No._"

"But I don't know if a cave is the best place to train you, since you're, um, a fire-type."

"_No._"

"Heat," Risa said, trying to inch towards Violet City. "That doesn't even make sense."

"_No,_" Heat shot back, inching at the same rate towards the opening to Dark Cave.

"But -"

"_NO EXCUSES LET'S GO NOW._"

And with that, Heat lunged at her, grabbed her hand, and began tugging her towards the mouth of the cave.

For somebody who stood at least four feet shorter than Risa did (making the whole leading-by-the-hand thing really awkward and painful for her back), he pulled with a lot of force.

---

"Heat, I can't see a thing."

"_I know! Isn't it awesome?_"

"Heat, I think we should come back here once you know how to use flash."

"_What's that?_"

"An attack to light up dark places," Risa explained, trying not to sound like she was panicking on the inside. She _hated_ caves - especially ones that were pitch black.

"_Can't you see me?_" Heat asked. Risa looked in the direction she thought she heard his voice - down and a long ways ahead of her. "_My butt's on fire._"

As he said it, Risa saw a small flame shoot out of what she assumed was Heat's back. "Yeah, I see it," she said, "but I don't see anything else. Which is a problem, because I don't really know how we're gonna leave."

"_We don't need to leave. We just need to fight. And win. Against everybody._"

"Heat, that's a bad idea -" Risa shut her mouth.

"_Don't be a wimp -_"

"Heat, shut up," Risa hissed, freezing. For once in their short time together, Heat actually shut his mouth. "And stop moving," she added when she heard the sound of gravel rolling ahead of her.

"_I'm not moving,_" came his answer.

The pit of Risa's stomach dropped. If Heat wasn't moving, then who was?

She listened carefully, trying to figure out what caused the gravel-rolling, and then she heard something she knew from her own movement: human footsteps.

That, and a familiar glow. One just like the glow she just saw when Heat ignited his back, but one that came from much farther away than Heat stood.

Then she heard a muffled voice. A muffled human voice - one that belonged to a boy.

"- Flame wheel, again."

The cave lit up as a rolling flame slammed into a geodude, knocking it back and into a wall.

Risa's eyes widened - the flame attack came from a cyndaquil just like hers. And the boy that stood behind the other cyndaquil looked really familiar. He wore black clothing, had long red hair, and his eyes looked sarcastic and determined.

She couldn't place him, but she knew she'd seen his face somewhere.

Somewhere...

But where?

As the other cyndaquil sneered at the unconscious geodude, the boy looked over to Risa. Risa's stomach flip-flopped again at the realization that he'd noticed her, and not in a good way.

This boy, who looked about three or four years older than her, didn't look like the kind of person to get in the way off.

And, now that Risa looked behind her, she was in the way of him and the mouth of the cave.

"Hey," he said, snapping his fingers. His cyndaquil ignited its back with a flame that burned brightly and kept burning.

"The flash technique," Risa whispered to herself, unable to keep it in. All of a sudden, she felt jealousy in addition to fear. She wanted Heat to be able to light up scary caves like that.

But then she thought of something else - if the boy could light up the cave, then why didn't he? That made him seem dark and mysterious, like a thief lurking about under cover of darkness.

Then Risa's stomach flip-flopped again, because she knew where she recognized the boy's face. It was the same face as described by the police investigating the recent break-in of Professor Elm's lab - she'd heard about it on the news when she was spending the night at Mister Pokemon's house.

"Who are you?" the boy demanded, "and where did you get that cyndaquil?"

"Um, I-I g-got him," Risa stuttered, unsure of whether to lie or tell the truth. "A-at, um..."

"_I'm from Professor Elm's laboratory!_" Heat yelled, rising up on his hind legs and igniting his back. "_I'm Heat, and this is Risa Miyamoto of New Bark Town. We're gonna be champions in the future, so you should challenge us now!_"

"That doesn't make sense, but," the boy said, snapping his fingers and sneering. "I'll take you up on the challenge. Assassin, go for his neck!"

"USETACKLEWHENHEGETSCLOSE!" Risa shrieked, completely losing her cool.

Heat didn't seem to understand her (which was understandable, since she didn't really understand herself), because he lunged straight at the other cyndaquil.

He took the full force of the oncoming attack - a quick attack - but managed to take it in the stomach instead of the neck. This gave him easy access to the back of the other cyndaquil's neck, which he blasted with an ember.

His opponent squealed, rolled to the side, and tried to blow flames back.

"No! Assassin - no fire attacks!" the other trainer yelled, but it was too late. Heat took the fire on his back, and fell backwards...

And his ignited back, in addition to the fire blasted at him, fell right onto his opponent's face, smothering it.

"Assassin!" the boy yelled, running forward and kicking Heat off.

"Hey!" Risa yelled, catching Heat before he could roll into something sharp. The light from Assassin's back flickered, and their light source all but disappeared. "No kicking - that's against the rules!"

"Like I care." The boy picked up his pokemon. "I don't know how you won, but I'm pulling out of this battle. It's a waste of my time."

Heat growled. "_What? We won! You got to get trounced by future league champs!_"

Risa quickly covered his mouth when she saw the angry look on the other trainer's face. "I - he - we didn't mean that, w-we just -"

"Shut it, kid," the boy snapped. "But I got my eye on you. You and your punk cyndaquil." He shoved past her, then stopped. "You said your name was Risa, right?"

"No I didn't I said it was something else I think I said it was -"

"_Yeah, her name's Risa,_" Heat said, interrupting his trainer's futile attempt to lie. "_And I'm -_"

"Heat. You told me." He turned. "I'm Gin," he said, grinning maliciously. "Next time I meet you, you're not going to need to know my name anymore."

"_Why?_" Heat asked, not really understanding the threat.

Gin didn't answer. He just turned and walked out of the cave. "Don't follow me," he yelled back as he (and his light source) left the cave. "Or I'm going to have to break some more rules."

Risa gulped and nodded, though even if Gin had turned to see, he would have been met with Dark Cave's characteristic darkness.

"_Let's follow him!_" Heat exclaimed after a few silent moments passed.

His trainer just zapped him back into his pokeball. "I hope I never see him again," she muttered before putting her hands on the rock wall and feeling her way back to the mouth of the cave.

As she walked towards the light of day, she thought to herself: once they reached Violet City, they wouldn't train anymore. Even though they won that match by luck (and Heat's ability to trip in the right directions), she didn't feel like battling anymore to increase his chance of winning through skill. She just wanted a hot bath and a nice place to sleep.

And after she went to sleep, they'd have twenty-six more days.

---

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon. I do own these original characters and this storyline.

Author's Note: Sorry for the wait. I promise to update more this summer...I'm going to try to update this a lot more before I switch to frequent updates on Poltergeist's. Hopefully, you'll see why soon...


	7. Firebird Suite

**Chapter 7: Firebird Suite**

"_WAKE UP!_"

"No..."

"_I SAID WAKE UP!"_

"I said nooo..."

"_Well, then, you asked for it._"

Risa screamed as the blanket covering her sleeping body suddenly disappeared. She cringed, kicking her feet wildly, but realized it did no good.

She sat up, looking down at the floor of the small Pokemon Center room. On it stood her small cyndaquil and her blanket. "_You need to get up now,_" Heat stated, his paws on his hips. "_We need to go to the gym now._"

Risa rubbed her eyes. "But our appointment isn't until noon. What time is it now?"

"_I don't know._" Heat narrowed his eyes. "_I don't know how to read clocks. That's for you to do. I just have to battle and beat up everyone else so we can become league champs._"

His trainer yawned and fumbled for her cell phone. "Heat, it's only seven. I wanna sleep another hour..."

"_No._"

"But I'll need rest if we wanna get the gym badge -"

"_No._"

"Heeeee-eat," Risa whined. "I'm tiiiiii-ired."

"_I don't care. Sleep during the gym match. When you wake up, I'll have our gym badge for you. NOW LET'S GO I WANNA BEAT THE GYM LEADER._"

As Risa stood up and started tugging off her pajamas and tugging on her day clothes, she wondered aloud: "Heat, do you even know what kind of gym leader is in Violet City Gym?"

"_Yeah, of course I do. I'm not stupid,_" the cyndaquil spat as he faced the wall, giving Risa some privacy. "_It's a human one. Duh._"

Risa rolled her eyes. "I mean what kind of pokemon he uses. D'you know?"

"_Of course I don't! But it doesn't matter. I'll beat 'em up so quick, they won't know what hit 'em._"

He turned around and gave Risa a squinty-eyed stare, one that probably meant to be reassuring at some level. But all Risa could think about was that Heat didn't know what kind of pokemon they were going up against. She'd read that Violet City Gym specialized in bird pokemon and was officially listed as a flying-type gym, but didn't remember much more than that.

She also realized as they walked downstairs to get breakfast that she only had one pokemon. With under five hours until their appointment at the gym, she didn't have enough time to catch and train a second - and didn't all gym leaders fight with at least two pokemon? And even if she did have enough time, she couldn't think of any pokemon she saw on the way to the gym that looked like it would be strong against birds.

As she sat down with Heat at an empty table, she mentally sized up her pokemon. All she had was a tiny fire-type with squinty eyes and an exploding back.

The Violet City Gym leader probably had at least two gigantic predatory birds with talons the size of Heat's head.

Yep.

She was doomed.

---

"Are you nervous?" the attendant asked as Risa sat in the waiting room.

"N-no," Risa lied, shaking as she said it.

The attendant, a young woman with jet black hair and tan skin, smiled. "Don't worry. It's your first gym badge, right?"

"Y-yes..."

"Everyone gets nervous during their first gym match. Just believe in yourself and remember to breathe," the woman advised. "My first match was against Brock in Kanto. I managed to beat his onix with my butterfree. If I could do it, you can do it against Faulkner. Although," she added, "I wouldn't go up against Faulkner with a butterfree."

"I'm not," Risa said, clutching Heat's pokeball and remembering how he had insisted he take on _all_ of Faulkner's pokemon by himself. (She had suggested running out and begging a wild pokemon to help them with the battle when she had a minor mental meltdown after breakfast.) "I d-don't have any bugs."

"That's good. Oh!" The attendant looked at her screen. "Risa Miyamoto, we're ready for you now."

"Great..."

The attendant lead Risa into an elevator and pushed one of the buttons near the top. "The arena is on the gym roof," she explained as they went up. "We're one of the few Johto gyms that fights outdoors. Isn't that exciting?"

Risa nodded, trying to smile politely while praying that it wouldn't rain.

Sooner than she wanted, they were exiting the elevator and walking out from under an awning onto the rooftop arena. A fence ringed the huge battlefield with bleachers on either side, but most of what she saw was a large blacktop with easy access to the huge blue sky above.

_At least there are no clouds,_ Risa thought, grateful that at least the weather wouldn't be against her.

On the other side of the arena she saw a young man with black hair and traditional birdkeeper's attire step into the opposing trainer's box.

"Welcome to the Violet City Gym!" an announcer said over the loudspeaker. "This match is between Violet City Gym Leader Faulkner and challenger Risa Miyamoto for a standard grade, first level Zephyr Badge. Two pokemon will be allowed," Risa's stomach flip-flopped at learning she'd be outnumbered, "and the match will end when both pokemon on one side are unable to battle. This will be a single battle, traditional-style, no items allowed and switch-ins only allowed on the challenger's side."

Risa's head swam, suddenly forgetting all the battle terminology she had learned. What did a single battle mean? And traditional-style - what was that? And what switch-ins - she only had one pokemon!

"Trainers, are you ready?"

Faulkner nodded. "Ready on our side."

"Ready!" Risa squeaked after realizing they were waiting on her to say something.

"Release on my count," a referee standing on the edge of the battlefield ordered. "Three...two...one...release!"

"Go!" Faulkner shouted, throwing a pokeball out onto the field and releasing a pidgey.

Risa took a deep breath. A pidgey. She could fight a pidgey. She and Heat had fought many pidgeys on their way to Violet City. Granted, they hadn't defeated all of them, but he'd been getting better at it. "Go, Heat!"

Her cyndaquil exploded onto the field, his back already on fire. "_Aw, yeah!_" He grinned. "_Let's do this!_"

"Challenger gets the first attack," the referee stated when he realized nobody was fighting yet.

"Oh! Right! Sorry!" Risa looked onto the field. "Start it off with an ember attack, Heat!"

"Up," came the order from the other side as Heat dove forward, spitting fire from his mouth.

The pidgey's feet caught the brunt of the embers, and from Risa's point of view, they looked somewhat burnt on the bottom. _That means it can't land,_ she realized. _But it's a bird! That won't matter!_

"Tackle from the air," Faulkner said, noting the burns on his pidgey but not reacting outwardly. The bird dove down onto Heat, slamming into the right side of his head and knocking him sideways.

Heat rolled, skidding a bit, but got back on his feet without much difficulty. Without waiting for an order from Risa, he blew another ember at the pidgey, but he blew it too low again - it only hit the pidgey's foot.

"Again." The pidgey dove again, knocking its body into Heat's head. Heat tripped, falling onto the blacktop and wobbling when he got up.

Risa bit her lip. "Try your own tackle!"

He glared at her. "_I can't reach that!_"

"Try..."

But before she could give an order, the pidgey blew a steady stream of sand into Heat's eyes. "A sand attack," Risa groaned. Now Heat would have an even worse time seeing the opponent. But... "Wait - Heat! Try your smokescreen attack! Make it as wide-spreading as you can!"

Heat took a deep breath and blew. A cloak of black smoke spread over the battlefield, masking Heat's location from the pidgey as the bird flew higher to avoid getting trapped in the smoke.

"Now they both can't see each other," Risa mumbled. Of course, she couldn't see Heat _either_, but she figured it might help somehow. She had no clear strategy in mind; her panic at challenging the gym leader seemed to have sapped her brain of any sort of critical thinking and intuition.

All she had was hope.

Faulkner squinted against the smoke. "Gust - blow it away and hit the cyndaquil."

"HEAT JUMP UP AND EMBER!"

As the pidgey beat its wings to spread the smoke, Heat launched himself up from the blacktop and spat flames against the pidgey's unprotected stomach.

The bird squealed and dropped out of the air onto Heat, landing on Heat's neck. He grinned, tossed his head back and ignited the flames on his back.

Faulkner's pidgey rolled right into the flames, and by the time he rolled out of them and onto the arena floor, he was unconscious.

"Pidgey is defeated, round goes to the challenger's cyndaquil," the referee announced after a quick inspection.

"Yes!" Risa couldn't believe it - they had defeated a gym leader's pokemon! Maybe they could actually win this badge!

Faulkner didn't seem too bothered by it. He returned his defeated pidgey and took out another pokeball. As the announcer explained that the gym leader had one pokemon left, Faulkner released his second fighter.

"Pidgeotto."

Risa's expectations of defeating the gym leader disappeared as she saw the large bird land on the arena. The new bird stood at least twice or three times the height of its predecessor, and it had sharper talons and a sharper beak. Not to mention its eyes looked a whole lot meaner and more calculating - smarter. Definitely smarter.

"Gust."

The bird launched into the air, flapped its wings, and slammed Heat into the arena.

He groaned, tried to stand, and then fell.

The referee bent down to see if there was any sign of movement, then straightened. "Cyndaquil is defeated, round goes to the gym leader's pidgeotto."

Risa stared at the match, her mouth open. She couldn't believe how quickly Heat went down against Faulkner's second pokemon.

"Um, Risa," the attendant from before said. "You should release your second pokemon now."

"I - sniff - I d-don't have a - sniff - second p-pokemon," Risa stuttered, her eyes beginning to water.

"Match goes to the gym leader," the referee said with a sigh. Risa was sure she heard him mutter, "crazy kids. Going up against Faulkner with only one pokemon."

She watched Faulkner return his second bird and leave the arena in slow motion, her own sense of time suddenly wrenched out from under her. Her hands fumbled for Heat's pokeball, and she found herself returning him. It seemed surreal, walking out of the gym and over to the Pokemon Center, but she made it.

She left Heat's pokeball with the nurse at the front desk and ran up to her room. The door slammed, she threw herself on the bed, and for some reason she couldn't place, began to sob into the pillow.

Twenty-five days left.

---

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon.

Author's Note: Please review?


	8. Burn Book

**Chapter 8: Burn-Book**

"I'm sorry, but we've become very busy today," the Violet City Gym attendant explained. "We've gotten a lot of trainers who want to challenge Faulkner, and he is under new regulations on how many official battles he can fight each day."

"But," Risa said, her eyes beginning to water. "How - I mean - I just -"

The attendant sighed. "Look, I understand how you feel. I was there yesterday, remember? I oversaw your gym match. I get it. Losing your first gym battle is really rough. But," she gave Risa a reproachful look, "if you'd made another appointment on your way out, you would have been able to get a time slot tomorrow."

She didn't add the "instead of running and crying and almost throwing some sort of tantrum," but Risa heard it in her voice. The girl blinked back the same frustrated tears of the day before. "But I came here as fast as I could this morning. I need to get this badge so I can go home," she whined, her voice cracking.

"The first time I can give you is in six days," the attendant said as she ignored Risa's emotions and checked her computer. "You'll be fighting the first match of the day at nine in the morning. I can reserve that time for you if you'd like - it's the earliest available appointment."

Risa sniffed, wiped her nose, and nodded. "Y-yeah. We'll t-take it."

The woman entered in Risa's information and printed out a receipt. "Think of it this way, dear," she said with a kind smile. "At least you have plenty of time to train." Risa took the receipt, shoved it in her wallet, and prepared to leave. "Although," the attendant added, stopping Risa. "If I were you, I'd have two pokemon when you come back. It's never really a good idea to go up against a gym leader with only one pokemon."

Risa sniffled again, nodded, and left. Her spirits were perhaps the lowest they had been since she started, and the attendant's words, however true they were, stung quite a bit.

She took out Heat's pokeball and stared at it for a few minutes outside the gym. "What're we gonna do, Heat?" Risa mumbled as her vision blurred. "You - sniff - you're too w-weak to - sniff - fight F-faulkner's b-birds. And - sniff - and I'm just - sniff - a stupid girl who c-can't train her - sniff - pokemon!"

By the time she finished whining, she realized quite a few people were staring at her. Despite the fact that many people lost to Faulkner's birds, apparently they didn't stay outside and _cry_ about it.

Risa's cheeks turned red, and she bowed to the people, mumbling an "I'm sorry," before dashing back to the Pokemon Center...

And tripping over her own shoelaces.

"Today sucks," she whined as she limped into the Center, her knees dirty and a little bloody. "It's the worst day _ever._"

---

And it got worse.

"What do you mean I have to pay?" Risa shrieked to the middle-aged redhead nurse. "I thought this was free!"

"Free for the first three nights, I'm afraid," the nurse explained sadly. "Due to the influx of trainers during the summer season, we just don't have enough rooms to provide free accommodations for more than three nights. We heal pokemon for no charge, of course, and room and board is pretty cheap for any extra nights, but we really do need the money to cover longer stays."

Risa groaned, taking out her wallet. Her fingers ran over her bills, counting the numbers and sending them to her brain for addition. "I - I don't have enough!" she exclaimed, panic rising in her voice. "I - I can't - I can't pay! I - I don't - don't have enough money!"

Realizing that the young girl was starting to cause another scene, the nurse reached over and grabbed her wrist. "Stop panicking," the nurse said in a half-stern, half-kind ton of voice. "How many nights do you think you can pay for?"

Risa sniffed, then looked down at her meager funds. "Um, maybe...only...only one. Two, I guess, but then I dunno how I'd be able to buy food and potions and stuff."

"How about this," the nurse offered. "You pay for one night, and then in lieu of payment for all the other nights, you help out around the Center. We're having a used book sale tomorrow to raise funds, since we're non-for-profit, so you could help out with that. I'd say that'd cover two nights. Any other nights you can cover by doing dishes in the cafeteria. Does that sound fair?"

Risa chewed her lip. If there was one thing she hated, it was doing dishes. But her payment and the book sale would cover three nights, she had two more for free, and if she managed to beat Faulkner at her next appointment, that would mean she'd only have to do one night's worth of dishes (whatever that meant).

That also meant that however much time she'd spend at the sale and doing dishes would be taken away from time spent training Heat. She had no clue really how to catch another pokemon or which pokemon to catch. All she knew was that Heat needed to get stronger.

"Um, okay. I'll do it." Risa handed over the money to cover one night.

"Great. See you tomorrow!"

---

"Where should I go to help out at the book sale?"

The nurse from the previous day reached over and grabbed a pokeball, releasing it to reveal a standard chansey. "Cheer, could you go get Mei, please?"

The round, pink pokemon nodded and waddled off into the depths of the Pokemon Center, coming back with a tall twenty-something with black hair, dark brown skin, and the creepiest yellow eyes Risa had ever seen. Over her black shirt and blue jean shorts she wore a white apron with the Pokemon Center logo.

"So you're helping at the sale, huh?" she asked Risa, looking down at the shorter trainer. "My name's Mei. I'm running the sale today, so you'll be working for me."

Risa bit her lip, then nodded. Mei had a booming voice that intimidated the younger girl, and she hated super tall people. They scared her. It was like they could step on her by accident and squash her like a bug. "Hi. M-my name's Risa."

"Nice to meet you, Risa. Now, come with me."

And with that, Mei yanked Risa away from the counter and dragged her out into the open area behind the Pokemon Center. Underneath a large tent stood tables of books in boxes ringed by bookshelves stocked with even more books. As Risa inspected a nearby box, she saw a jumble of fiction genres with spines that looked to be no younger than five or six years.

"So basically, fiction's in the boxes and nonfiction's in the shelves. We don't really have any system other than that," Mei explained as she strode over to her cash register. "I'm working the cash register. Your job is to make sure the customers find what they're looking for and that they don't steal anything. Oh - and consolidate the boxes once they're looking a bit empty."

Risa nodded hesitantly, not really sure how to help people find things if there was no order. But before she could do anything other than tug on the Pokemon Center apron that Mei tossed her, people had already started to trickle in.

The girl sighed, her hand brushing Heat's pokeball. "Sorry, you're gonna have to stay in here today," she mumbled before running off to keep a little toddler from chewing his way through the nonfiction shelves.

---

A few hours later, Risa found herself trying to help an elderly man find a list of books. The man, who had a long white mustache and thick-rimmed glasses and had introduced himself as Tsuruda, was apparently looking for a variety of books on different subjects for his book stall back home. (He never specified where "home" was, only that it was no longer in Johto.)

"It says 'a book about the sea routes of Hoenn'," Risa read, squinting at the man's curly script. "Um, that's probably gonna be in the nonfiction shelves..."

As she walked over to the shelves she tripped over a book on the ground. Her already scraped knees hit the ground for the second time that day, her shorts and apron doing nothing to soften the blow.

"Ow!" Risa winced and turned to pick up the book. "'The Southern Seas'," she read, looking at the cover. She flipped it open and looked for any mention of the Hoenn region - which she found, as the page she opened it to contained a map of the sea routes around Sootopolis City. Figuring it fit the description of the needed book, she slammed the cover closed, stood up, and looked around for Tsuruda.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

She winced again, turning around to see a familiar person standing right behind her.

"Did you have to yell, Ichiro?" she spat, rubbing her ears.

Ichiro narrowed his eyes. "Is this part of your plan?"

"What plan?"

"Your plan to trick me into a false sense of security so that you can beat me," he explained.

Risa shook her head. "I dunno what you're talking about. I'm just working."

"Why?"

"So I can stay long enough to get the stupid Violet City badge."

"You only came in here this morning?" Ichiro asked, looking shocked. "But you were ahead of me! Right? I saw you pass by me on that big tauros, looking like you were about to puke."

'I was not about to puke! But - hey," Risa stopped, looking behind her so-called rival. "Is that your hoothoot behind you?"

"What? Kazeko!" The hoothoot looked up from her spot underneath the table, looking a bit bleary-eyed. "What're ya doin' down there?"

"_I'm sleepy,_" the owl whined in a soft, girly voice. "_I wanna go to sleep._"

"Fine," Ichiro muttered, zapping his hoothoot back into her pokeball. "I caught her this morning. It was pretty easy; I guess it's just 'cause she was about to go to sleep." He clipped the pokeball back onto his belt and grabbed two more. "But I used these two to beat Faulkner - I just got Kazeko cuz I thought Faulkner's birds were cool."

He dropped the two pokeballs, and two pokemon appeared - one that Risa recognized as Freeze, Ichiro's totodile, and the other as a sentret she hadn't seen.

The sentret sniffed the ground, then looked up at Risa. "_Melon bread?_" she asked in a thick Old Johto accent. "_Ah want some melon bread._"

"Ignore her," Ichiro muttered with a wave of his hand. "That's Kansai, my weird sentret."

"_Hello, Trainer of Fire,_" Freeze said as she looked up at Risa's face. "_I see our paths converge once again._"

"Uh, hi."

"_Where is the Master of Fire? My opposite and balancing force?_"

"Uh...he's..." Before Risa could say any more, Heat's pokeball forcibly opened and her cyndaquil popped out onto one of the fiction tables. "Oh. Hi, Heat," she said glumly.

"_LET'S BATTLE!_" Heat roared, standing on his back legs and almost igniting a box of bedraggled old romance novels. "_He's our rival, we gotta -_"

"Thank you, Heat," Risa said as she returned him to his pokeball. "Sorry, but we can't battle right now," she told the other trainer. "We're working. We, uh, we lost to Faulkner the first time, so we gotta work so we can pay for the Pokemon Center room 'n board until we rechallenge. So, uh, yeah..."

Ichiro frowned. "Oh." He looked down at the present two-thirds of his team awkwardly. "Well, then, uh, we'd better just go now...c'mon, Freeze, Kansai."

Risa waved as he returned his two fighters and left the tent without another word. She sighed. "Great. Even _he_ beat Faulkner."

"Hey!" Risa looked up to see Mei looming over her. "I overheard you talking to that little boy."

"I'm sorry! I wasn't working! I'll go back to work!" Risa sputtered, panicking a bit. Was she in trouble? Why was her boss so scary?

Mei shook her head. "No, it's fine. I was gonna suggest we take a lunch break, anyway, since Nurse Satou said she'd cover for us for an hour or so."

"Oh." Relief washed over Risa. "Yeah, um, okay."

"But I overheard that you lost to Faulkner," Mei said as the two of them left the tent to go sit on the benches outside. "You're training for a rematch, right?"

"Yeah," Risa said glumly. "Heat's not so good with fighting birds, I guess."

"Who's Heat? A growlithe?"

"Cyndaquil."

"Huh. Well, if you want," Mei said, taking out a pokeball and enlarging it. "We could do a practice battle. I have a bird of my own." The pokeball released its contents, which turned out to be a spearow. The bird hopped around on the ground, glancing up at Risa with a glint in his one good eye - the other looked like it had been slashed out by something, as the skin around his other eye held a scraggly scar. "You could train against me and Scar. He's not exactly like Faulkner's pidgeotto, but it couldn't hurt, right?"

Risa grinned, releasing Heat. "Okay! But - let's not battle for money."

"'Course not. It's just training. Get up in the air!"

"Heat! Ignite your back!"

"Tackle!"

"Ember!"

---

"Sorry it took so long to get you your book," Risa said as she handed over _The Southern Seas_ to Tsuruda. "I went on lunch break."

The old man looked at Risa through his glasses. "Your hair is burnt."

Risa blushed, embarrassed, and ran her hand through the hair behind her left ear. It was true - one of Heat's embers had gone a little off course while he was aiming for a dive-bombing Scar, and he had hit his own trainer's hair. She had a small chunk of it missing, and the tips of the remaining hair around it were blackened. "Y-yeah. I was training..."

"I see," the man said. "I remember when my pokemon was still alive," he said fondly, taking out an old black and white picture of a young boy and a natu. "We'd battle and read books all day."

Risa looked down at the smiling faces in the picture. "I'm sorry," she said, not really sure what else to say. The boy and his natu looked so happy in the picture, but she could hear the twinge of sadness in the man's voice.

"Libra was a good girl. I miss her." He gave Risa a stern look. "You should make sure to appreciate your fire-type pokemon while he's with you. There is no better friend than a pokemon with whom you've shared your life."

He turned, picked up his stack of books, and walked towards the cash register. After he paid, he turned to leave, then tilted his head back towards Risa. "Libra was always better at finding the book a person would need to read, but I had a hunch this one might be a good match for you."

Tsuruda tapped a black leather book in the nonfiction shelves with a wrinkled, knobby old finger, then walked away.

Risa walked over to the shelf and grabbed the book. The cover had some sort of language she didn't recognize, save for one word:

"'Grimoire'," she read, squinting at the dusty old cover. She looked up to see if Tsuruda was still around, but something else caught her eye.

In the bushes directly outside, she saw the afternoon sunlight hit something sparkly and red - the red jewel on the forehead of an espeon.

"Es - espeon?" Risa exclaimed, jumping forward in the direction of the eevee evolution involuntarily. Just as she did, the espeon vanished. The girl stopped, her heart racing. It was pretty much every little girl's dream to own an espeon. Their rarity probably helped that dream; while healthy eevees themselves were rare enough, being able to evolve one into an espeon seemed near impossible. Plus, once evolved, they were generally difficult to handle.

That one looked wild, too.

And there was no such thing as a wild espeon.

Risa's stomach flipped, and she looked down at the book in her hands. She brushed the cover, trying to remove some of the dust, and saw that in the center, just below the word "grimoire", was a dull red jewel.

"Hey, Mei?"

Mei looked up from her seat behind the cash register. "Yeah?"

"How much for this book?"

Twenty-three days left.

---

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon.

Author's Note: If you're going to stop reading this story or start fangirling over it because an espeon showed up, don't - the espeon plays an extremely minor role in this story and will probably show up only once or twice more, if at all. She comes in later in the "sequel" as a minor character.


	9. Will o' Wisp

**Chapter 9: Will-O-Wisp**

"Mei said this was the best place to train," Risa said, staring up at the pagoda in front of her.

"_You said it's called 'The Bellsprout Tower'."_

"Yeah. It says so right there." Risa pointed to the sign on the gate, a dull bronze plaque with traditional script and an engraved outline of a bellsprout. "Apparently, there's a legend that says there's a really big bellsprout in the middle of the tower." She turned back to stare up at the pagoda. "That's why it moves and shakes."

Heat looked up at her, his eyes wide with excitement. (Which, for his squinty eyes, wasn't very wide.) "_Really?_"

"No," his trainer replied. "That's the legend. It's really shaking 'cause there're people training inside."

The cyndaquil sighed, looking down dejectedly. "_Oh._ _Wait - people train in it?_"

"Yeah, Heat, that's why we're here. 'Cause you lost at the gym and -"

"_STOP REMINDING ME ABOUT THAT AND YOU KNOW I DON'T LIKE HEARING ABOUT IT AND IT WAS YOUR FAULT TOO AND I HATE BIRDS."_

Risa shrugged. "Fine. But we still need to train so we can get the stupid badge so I can go home."

Heat stared up at her. "_What about the next badge?_"

"Ugh, fine, that badge, too! AND THEN I can go home! Now let's go!" With that, she hoisted Heat into the air and stomped into the first level of the tower.

Once inside, the air seemed to close in around them, and Risa noted that there was no real indoor lighting system other than the occasional candle. The light streamed in through tiny, high-up gaps between the wood doors and the ceiling, and the rice paper walls let in a diffuse glow from the sun. In the center of the dim room stood a huge pillar, one that seemed to shake slowly back and forth. Bronze bellsprout statues dotted the room, all staring back at the newcomers with dull metallic eyes.

Risa slowly put Heat down onto the tatami floor, looking around. "D'you think I should take off my shoes?" Heat shrugged, and Risa just stood there, unsure of what to do. "Where is everyone?"

"_I hear scratching coming from up there,_" Heat said, pointing towards an old, creaky wood staircase. It moaned and groaned with the slow shaking of the tower, making Risa wonder if it was safe wood to stand on. "_Let's go! They're probably pokemon that're waiting for us! Let's go beat them now!"_

"Okay, okay." Risa lifted her foot to stand on the main floor of the tower, then thought against it. "One sec," she said, sitting down and slipping off her shoes. Now that she was sitting down, she noticed that there were a few pairs of running shoes and hiking boots off to the side, in a dim corner, so she put them there. Right next to them were a few pairs of neatly lined-up grey slippers, so she grabbed a pair, slid them on, and jogged after Heat (who had ignored her and started to waddle towards the staircase). "I told you to wait up!"

"_I don't wanna wait for slowpokes,_" Heat said as they both started to walk up the stairs to the next level. (To Heat's dismay, Risa could go up stairs a lot quicker than he could, making him the "slowpoke".)

"Hey, I'm a person! Not a -" Risa stopped. She had reached the end of the staircase and was looking into a dark room filled with glowing eyes, dark purple mist, and laughing gaseous faces with huge teeth and tongues. "Gastly!"

Heat, who was a few steps behind her coming up the staircase due to his size, called from behind, "_I called you a slowpoke, stupid, not a -_" Then he reached the top of the staircase as well. "_Gastly._"

"See what I mean?" his trainer hissed, not taking her eyes off the mass of ghosts.

"_Yeah. Sorry 'bout that._"

"Did - did you just _apologize_ to me?"

"_No._"

"But -" She couldn't finish her sentence, because the entire roomful of gastly descended upon them, tongues out, teeth bared, and ghost mists diving straight into Risa and Heat's throats. Risa could barely choke out an, "ember!" before the chaos of the floor-turned-battlefield stole her ability to process anything into short-term memory.

"Just - ember! HEAT, THERE'S ONE RIGHT BEHIND YOU! Ember - no! Run in a circle! AIIIEEEE HEAT GET IT OFF ME, GET IT OFF! Wait - you can go through them? Ember from the inside of one - I don't care if it's creepy, do it! Ember! Ember! Do what you did again -

"Ember!

"Ember!

"EMBER!"

---

"Wait 'til its mouth is open - NOW!"

Heat blew a handful of half-choked off embers into the gastly's mouth the split second before the lick attack would have gotten him. The gastly's large eyes rolled up and behind, the gaseous pokemon swirling around and finally hanging limply a few centimeters above the floor. It was out cold.

A panting, sweaty Risa scanned the floor. "I - I think - that's all," she wheezed between ragged breaths. "Good - good job."

"_Thanks,_" Heat grumbled, collapsing on the floor. "_I'm so tiiired,_" he whined, "_and I can't spit out anymore fire, so - gaaaah I can't breathe - so if anymore come, we're gonna die._"

"We - huff - we're not gonna die," his trainer said, straightening up and ignoring the tingling feelings in her thighs. Even though in a normal trainer battle, one with rules and a clear battlefield and only one opponent for every pokemon she had out, she never had to move much, Risa had to do a lot of sprinting during the gastly ambush. After the first few moments, Risa had realized that if she got hit by a gastly's attack, she'd go down a lot quicker than her pokemon - humans weren't meant to take pokemon attacks and bounce right back. And, judging by the way Heat flailed about when she didn't give him directions, that would spell instant defeat for him, too.

And then the ghosts would eat them, since ghosts were probably the kinds of beings that would do such a thing. (Or, at least, Risa figured they'd do something like eat them. Maybe absorb their life energy or turn them into ghosts to make an army. Or just torment their souls for the rest of eternity. Something creepy like that.)

Heat looked up at her, wearing his best "I am serious" face. Unfortunately for him, his "I am serious" face looked more like his "I have something in my eyes and it is causing me much pain" face than anything else. "_No, we're gonna die. Which means we won't get to beat the Elite Four._"

"I told you, Heat, we're not gonna -"

"_AND IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT!"_

"Heat, we're not - AAAAAAAAH!" Risa had to scream as the lights on the entire floor flickered on. Both trainer and cyndaquil had to squeeze their eyes shut, spots appearing on the backs of their eyelids. "I didn't know there were lights!"

"There aren't."

Risa squeaked in surprise at the voice, opening her eyes a little. As the blinding afterimages disappeared, she saw that on the other side of the room stood an old man in monk togs and a glowing bellsprout. She looked up - the monk was right. The ceiling was bare hardwood, no electric lights or candles to be seen.

"You did a good job on your ambush training, miss," the man said, walking forward through the mass of unconscious ghosts, his bellsprout trailing behind.

Risa gaped. "T-training! This was _training?_"

The monk frowned. "Of course. Why else would you be here?"

"Well - yeah, but - I mean," she exchanged a glance with Heat, "y-you could have told us, or something! Or - I d'no - taught us something!"

The monk's bellsprout snickered (though it stopped when Heat glared at him and coughed out an ember - Risa guessed it didn't know that the little sputter was Heat's last ember), but the monk merely smiled. "If we told you, you wouldn't have learned nearly as much. By the end of it, you developed some good strategies."

"_We beat 'em!_" Heat exclaimed.

"Yeah, Heat, we did," mumbled his trainer. "But..."

"Would you like more training? If you come to the top level," the monk explained, "we can do more formal training, one-on-one and outside of battles. It is usually extremely beneficial to all who take part."

Risa thought for a moment, staring down at her bedraggled-yet-battle-high cyndaquil. "...Okay. But, um, can we heal first? Or rest? We're _really _tired."

The monk turned, but Risa caught a twinkle in his brown eyes. "Of course not. In order to defeat powerful enemies, you need to have stamina. If you wish to take part in our training, follow me. If you wish to take an unneeded break, then go back to where you came."

Risa and Heat looked at each other for a moment, then both wordlessly followed the monk to the top level.

---

"Your gym battle is the day after tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Risa replied as she and Heat stretched. They had been training all day, but weren't quite as worn out as they had been at the end of the previous two days of training in the tower. She gulped down some water and felt her thighs. They were still sore. "I think we're gonna train on one of the routes tomorrow, though. At least a little."

"Ah," the monk, who had been her and Heat's (sort of) "personal trainer" for the past three days, turned to the panting cyndaquil, peering down at him with interest. "His flames aren't out quite yet."

"_I GOT STRONGER, WHADDYA EXPECT?_" Heat snarled, his flames bursting out of his back.

"Heat, be nice," Risa hissed.

The monk just smiled like he always did. "Very well. I wish you luck and bid you goodnight."

Risa nodded, grabbing her things and motioning for Heat to follow her out. "Bye, and thanks!"

"_Bye, old man!_"

"Heat! That's not nice!"

As they stepped out into the evening and started to walk towards the Pokemon Center, Risa stopped to watch a flock of hoothoots take to the air and fly off towards the center of town. When she looked down again, Heat had already made it to the gym, which stood along their path back to the Center.

"_We're gonna take 'em down,_" he kindly informed her as she caught up.

"Yeah," Risa mumbled, pointedly not looking at the building. Unlike her pokemon, she couldn't seem to shake the feeling of imminent defeat as they grew closer to their rematch. "Let's go."

They kept walking.

"Twenty left..."

"_What?_"

"Nothing..." Risa shook her head. "It's nothing. Let's go."

---

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon. I do own the original characters in this story.


	10. Magma

**Chapter 10: Magma**

"Whew!" Risa said, slumping down beneath a tree on Route 36. They'd been training in the patches of grass and small trees. Heat fell down next to her, looking somewhat tired. "Good job getting rid of those annoying pidgeys."

"_Whatever,_" Heat mumbled. "_Most of 'em ran away before I could knock 'em out._"

Risa shrugged, digging around in her backpack to find her water bottle. "You thirsty?"

"_No._"

"Okay, okay, just askin'," Risa said, gulping down some of the lukewarm water. Heat gave her a strange look. "Y'know, you're not the only one who's working out. I'm not super athletic and I've been havin' to run behind you and run around to find better vantage points and run when you sprint off to find something else to beat. Plus, it's hot."

"_No, it's not. You're crazy._"

"I'm not crazy, you're a fire-type, so you don't even notice." Risa made a gesture with her hands, flinging them up towards the blaring sun. Her open water bottle spewed its contents up into the blanket-like air, some of it landing on her head and the rest splattering against the tree behind her. Thanks to all the heat - not to mention sitting next to a fire-type pokemon that was actually _on_ fire - she didn't mind the water on the back of her neck. "It's the middle of the summer so it's _hot_, so _I'm _hot."

Heat sniggered.

"Shut up," his trainer whined, not noticing that the tree she was leaning against was beginning to move. "I didn't mean it like that!"

The pokemon sneered. "_You're ugly, nobody would like you._"

"Heat, you're mean!" Risa whined, standing up and managing to avoid a swinging branch by sheer dumb luck. She assumed Heat's sudden shift of facial expression from smug to scared was due to the difference in their height, and she took that as a good thing. "I'm twelve years old, so I don't need to -"

"_E-E-EVIL MUTANT TREE!_" Heat managed to sit out before dashing in the opposite direction. Risa managed to turn just as the tree swung another triangular branch down at her head, shrieking and dashing after him.

It was only when they had managed to put enough space between them and the homicidal plant to deem themselves "safe" did Risa realize she'd left behind all her stuff. She turned, and to her dismay, the strange-looking tree now stood in between her and her backpack (and, more importantly, her water bottle; though, soon after thinking that, she realized she should have been more worried about her Pokedex or Heat's pokeball).

"Heat, it's a plant! Use ember!"

"_What? I'm not goin' near that thing! It's weird!_"

"Just set it on fire and we'll be FINE!"

"_No!_"

"Do it," Risa hissed, "or I'll tell all your future champion friends that you couldn't battle when you were little 'cause you were scared of a _tree._"

The cyndaquil grumbled something incoherent, but stomped towards the tree anyway and took in a deep breath. His backside burst into flames and he opened his mouth to spew enough tiny fireballs at the tree that Risa may have even called it a weak flamethrower attack if she was more myopic than she was.

The tree growled, but didn't look at all hurt by the fire. In fact, the fire didn't even leave a mark, much less the desired large expanse of black, charred plant skin.

Risa gaped. "What - is that -"

"_I TOLD YOU THAT TREE WAS WEIRD!_"

"Well, yeah, but - MOVE!_" _The tree slammed one of its branch-arms down onto the ground, releasing a barrage of rocks that flew up into the air and tumbled down towards her pokemon. "R-rock slide?" she shrieked, dashing to the side to avoid one of the mini-boulders. "What kind of plant knows _rock slide_?"

"_A really WEIRD one!_" Heat yelled from behind a not-so-small rock. How he managed to avoid the brunt of the rock slide, Risa did not know. She suspected it involved luck and an unusually helpful burst of stupidity.

Risa nodded, then noticed that the tree seemed ensconced with picking up various rocks that had fallen on the ground due to the rock slide attack and throwing them at Heat (or using them as a battering ram with which to flush him out of his rocky safe zone). Although she felt slightly worried for her outmatched cyndaquil, this meant she had a clear shot at getting to her backpack.

She took it. Hurling herself across the grassy hill, she managed to sprint over to her dusty backpack without the "weird tree" (as Heat so eloquently put it) noticing. After digging around a bit, she found her desired red electronic encyclopedia and whipped out her Pokedex. Flipping it open, she held it up so it could read data on the tree.

"S-sudowoodo," she read out loud, stuttering a bit due to a lack of breath. "The - the imitation pokemon. 'If a tree branch shakes w-when there's no wind, it's n-not a tree, it's a - a sudowoodo. It - it hides from the rain.' And it's a - _rock type?_! Heat! Heat, it's not a grass-type - it's a _rock-type_!"

"_Yeah, I kinda noticed!_" Heat's voice yelled from underneath one of the rocks. The tree, now known to be a (rather angry) sudowoodo, growled and tried to kick one of the rocks off of him. The rock shattered. Luckily, Heat didn't happen to be under that particular rock.

"I think it got mad 'cause I hit it with water from my water bottle! It says it hides from the rain, so I don't think it likes water!"

"_I noticed that, too! Come up with something useful, idiot!_"

Risa stared at the battle, her mind racing. What could they do? Heat was a fire-type, not a water-type. All he knew was ember, tackle, leer, and - "SMOKESCREEN!" She heard what sounded like a muffled explosion, and suddenly the sudowoodo and the pile of rocks were hidden by a thick layer of black smoke. "Good, now find it and use leer - use it a lot!"

"_I can't see it! And if it can't see me, I don't think -_"

"Shut up and do it!" Risa yelled back, not wanting to hear Heat's excuses, however logical they may have been. Instead, she went back to digging around in her backpack, looking for something she thought might help.

"_Okay, so I've been looking at it really meanly, and I think it's kinda mad now._"

"Good," Risa said, holding up two things - one was a full water and the other an empty pokeball. "Now run out of the smoke."

"_Are you CRAZY? Wait - don't answer. But then it'll be able to HIT ME WITH ROCKS._"

"It'll be fine! Do it!"

"_Fine, but I'm tellin' everyone how crazy you are!_"

She turned to face the smoke; a second later Heat zipped out of the smoke and began to make a beeline for her. "Good - get behind me!"

Heat dashed around her and peeked out from behind her legs at the sudowoodo, who had just begun to lumber out of the smoke. "_See? It's really mad,_" whispered Heat as he ducked his head back behind her legs. "_Really, really mad. And you're stupid,_" he added.

Risa ignored him, calling to their opponent instead. "He's right behind me! Why don'tcha come and get him!"

This appeared to work, as the irate sudowoodo shouted something angry and began to jog towards her. Risa held her breath, waiting for it to come close enough, and then -

Without thinking too much, she threw the entire contents of the water bottle into the sudowoodos' face. It shrieked, flailing around and squinting its eyes as if the lukewarm bottled water had been some sort of blinding acid. Risa then jumped towards it, slamming the pokeball into its face.

She fell to the side when one of its arms slammed into hers, but it still disappeared into the pokeball. Holding her arm and hoping she would only have a nasty bruise the next day as opposed to an actual fracture, she wriggled around to look at the pokeball status.

It shook once, then a second time, then a third time. Then it stood still in the tall, dry, yellow grass for what seemed like an hour, and then it dinged.

"_You caught the weird tree monster,_" Heat said, sounding like he couldn't believe it. "_That was amazing. Really stupid, but kind of amazing. But!_" He turned to her, already on his hind legs. "_I'm only gonna share my battle time if it's really powerful._"

"Heat," Risa began, panting a bit. "It - it almost buried you in r-rocks. I - I think it's pretty - pretty good at fighting."

"_Whatever. It'd better be._"

---

Three hours, two cross-town bus rides, and one Pokemon Center visit later, Risa was back on grassy Route 36 watching her new sudowoodo throw a large rock at a wild pidgey and knock it out in one hit. Luckily, her arm really did only bruise - the nurse at the Pokemon Center (who begrudgingly agreed to check Risa's arm even though her practice was in pokemon medicine) said it was nothing to worry about. It did hurt, though.

"Um, that was really good," she said, exchanging a half-amazed, half-terrified look at her former only teammate. "What attack was that?"

"_Rock throw,_" the sudowoodo replied, turning and standing pretty still. He had soft brown eyes that looked kind once he snapped out of his murderous rampage, and his wide mouth generally had nice things to say. "_I learned it from Crys._"

Risa frowned. "Um, who's Crys?"

"_My trainer._"

"But - um, I-I'm your trainer." Risa held up a red-and-white metallic sphere. "I caught you. Today. It's registered in my Pokedex and I translated you and everything. I-I'm your trainer."

The sudowoodo shook his head slowly. "_Crys is my trainer. Her real name is Mariko Amaiwa, but she goes by Crys, which is short for Crystal. Do you know her?_"

"N-no..."

"_Oh,_" the sudowoodo said, looking rather dejected. For something that didn't seem to show much emotion on his face, he was starting to look pretty sad. "_My pokeball broke,_" he added. "_And my name's Pseudo._"

"Oh," Risa replied, not exactly sure what to say.

"_Aaaawk-waaaaard,_" whispered her other pokemon, but he shut up when she kicked him lightly in the stomach.

Risa stared down at the pokeball she'd used to catch Pseudo earlier that day. "But I'm registered as your original trainer."

"_But I like Crys,_" he replied, though he quickly added an, "_I'm sorry, that was rude. I shouldn't say rude things._"

Risa cursed the heavens for sending her a polite pokemon that really wanted to get away from her. It was like lemon juice on the paper cut that was Heat the cyndaquil. "But - but you're a rock-type! You beat birds! I need to rechallenge Faulkner _tomorrow_!"

Pseudo perked up at this. "_A gym battle? I can do that. But afterwards, I only go with you until we can find my real trainer._"

As stung as she was when Pseudo referred to this "Crys" person as his real trainer, she gladly accepted. A powerful rock-type pokemon offering to win her a Zephyr Badge was a powerful rock-type pokemon offering to win her a Zephyr Badge.

"Well, um, can we keep training?"

"_Of course._"

As they began to walk, Risa looked down at her diminutive cyndaquil. "Please tell me you'll let him share 'your' battle time."

"_Fine, but only if he doesn't throw rocks at me._"

"I don't think he will."

"_Then fine. Whatever._"

"Good."

Nineteen days left.

---

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon. I do own this story.

Author's Note: I think sudowoodos are pretty awesome. They're like poser trees that shake when you hit them with water. Anybody with me?


	11. Relighting

Summer Heat

**Chapter 11: Relighting**

Risa chewed her bottom lip. After a rather sleepless night, here she was, standing in the challenger's box on the rooftop arena. The young man with traditional birdkeeper togs and messy black hair stood on the other side, sizing her up.

"You were here earlier, right?" Faulkner asked as the referee and announcer were getting ready.

Risa nodded. Faulkner saw that she didn't seem to be a chatty challenger, shrugged, and took out his first pokeball. (She hoped it was the same pidgey, as she figured Heat could handle it. Or, at least, have a chance of beating it without doing it by accident.)

With a quick glance over towards the off-arena areas to her left, she saw that the announcer and referee were ready to start. Sitting in the bleachers were a few people, and Risa immediately regretted looking over. She recognized one person as the attendant from before, the one who always signed her up and reprimanded her for only going up against Faulkner with one pokemon.

Next to her were four people she did not recognize. Two of them looked like a mother and her young son, just come to watch a gym match for fun. She sat next to him, and Risa overheard him saying that he should make sure not to distract the battlers. The little boy, who didn't look like he could have been more than six or seven, only looked like he was half listening.

The remaining two people weren't there together, but were both around ten or eleven and stared down at the arena impatiently. Risa realized they were both trainers - why hadn't she thought of that? If she'd watched a gym match, maybe she would have been less nervous!

On the other hand, Risa thought as she tried to ignore the spectators, having people watching _her_ gym match felt pretty nerve-wracking. She took out Heat's pokeball and tried to focus on her battle plan.

She didn't have too long, though, before the referee was yelling at her to release her first pokemon. Risa yelped, mentally reprimanding herself for spacing out, and threw her pokeball onto the arena. "Go, Heat!"

Both pokemon materialized, and Risa could see the same pidgey from before flitting about in the air in front of her little black snout-nosed fire-type. Faulkner and the pidgey stared at her. "You can attack first," Faulkner called from across the arena.

Risa took a deep breath, then shouted, "flash!"

Heat crouched down, focusing and clearing his mind as the monks in Sprout Tower taught him to do. Then he erupted his back in three quick flares, focusing more on light flashes than temperature.

It worked - the pidgey began to blink uncontrollably, faltering a bit. Risa and Heat grinned (though Risa's was more like a shy smile, since her stage fright kept her from reaching full grin potential). Faulkner's pidgey could barely see Heat due to the blinding afterimages, but Heat could see it just fine, unlike with smokescreen.

"Tackle," Faulkner ordered, though he looked concerned at his pidgey's reaction to Heat's flash attack. The bird dove down at Heat, but missed by half a meter. The bird groaned, hopping around and looking a bit dazed after hitting the dirty asphalt.

Without waiting for an order from Risa, since he knew what she'd probably tell him to do, Heat jumped at the pidgey. Before the pidgey had time to react, he blasted the pidgey's underbelly with a barrage of embers, turning his head when the pidgey jumped back to get the area underneath the pidgey's left wing.

The pidgey squealed in pain, trying to get up into the air to get away from Heat's embers. Unfortunately, the burn underneath its wing caused it even more pain when it flapped its wings. Begrudgingly, the pidgey landed.

"Mud-slap."

Heat screamed when the pidgey turned around and began digging at the dirt layer on top of the asphalt arena. It was pretty dry and not as muddy as Risa would have expected, but it got in Heat's eyes and clogged some of his fire glands. Plus, Risa realized, horrified, it was a ground-type attack.

Risa frowned. Judging from Heat's wriggling and flailing, she figured he couldn't see. That meant that he and the pidgey were on equal grounds in terms of accuracy. Which was bad, because her whole battle plan for Heat-versus-Faulkner's-pidgey was based on Heat outlasting the pidgey due to a difference in accuracy.

She watched as both Heat's ember attack and the pidgey's second mud-slap missed their respective targets by a long shot. Relying on the gamble that Heat's attacks would hit more than the pidey's wasn't something Risa felt like doing, but...

Then she saw the pidgey looked a bit more droopy on its left side as each turn went by. Frowning, she reached into her shorts pocket, pulling out her Pokedex. She hadn't used it much, but she did know she could use it to find out status conditions during a battle.

Flipping it open, she held it up to scan the pidgey. When the word "burn" came up on screen, Risa grinned. Heat had burned the pidgey! That meant he could just stall and still win.

"Heat!" Risa yelled, putting away her Pokedex. "Use smokescreen!"

"_But then I can't see the stupid bird, either!_" Heat yelled back.

"You can't see it anyway! You have dirt in your eyes!"

"_Whatever,_" her pokemon snapped, though he took in a deep breath, anyway. Just as the pidgey closed in for a tackle, Heat's back exploded in smoke. The pidgey cried out as it hit the ground instead of Heat, making an audible thud.

"Can you get out of the smoke?" Risa called.

"_Yeah!_"

"Then do it!"

"_Okay._"

A few seconds later, she saw Heat crawl out from the smoke blanket, his eyes squeezed shut. He wiped his eyes, trying to squint and get a picture of what was happening around him.

Risa waved. "Heat!" Heat looked over, squinting at her. "Keep blowing smoke at that pidgey. It's burnt, so if we just stall, it'll faint eventually."

Heat's face fell. "_Eventually? How long do we have to wait?_"

"Hey, winning a round is winning a round. Just do it."

More smoke billowed out of Heat's back. "_Can't the bird just blow it away?_" Heat asked after they realized they hadn't heard from the pidgey in awhile.

"It got burnt underneath the wing. Maybe it can't flap its wings hard enough," Risa said, shrugging.

They kept waiting like that for awhile, awkwardly staring at the smoke. Neither of them could see the pidgey or Faulkner, so they kept sneaking glances at the referee. He seemed to be checking the status of the battle on a hand-held computer. He stared at the computer screen for a few moments, his lips pursed and his mouth in a hard line, before raising up a flag towards Risa. "Pidgey is unable to battle. The round goes to the challenger."

"Right," they heard Faulkner say from the other side of the smoke. Risa then heard the sound of a pokemon disappearing back into a pokeball, then another pokemom being released. "Blow the smoke away and clear the battlefield," the gym leader ordered his second pokemon.

Risa quickly zapped Heat back into his pokeball and switched him out for Pseudo. The sudowoodo stood tall, branch-like arms out to his side.

They waited for the smoke clear, and when it did, Risa saw the same pidgeotto that had taken out Heat in one hit the previous time. She took a deep breath. "Rock throw."

Pseudo slammed his arms down onto the arena, cracking part of the arena into large rocks. He picked up one and hurled it at the bird. The pidgeotto squawked and dove to the side, but Pseudo didn't let up. He kept grabbing more and more rocks and hurling them at the bird.

Faulkner couldn't order the pidgeotto to get closer and attack Pseudo because that would increase chances of getting hit, Risa noted. And the pidgeotto would have to get hit eventually -

And it did. A rock slammed into the pidgeotto square in the chest, knocking it back and causing a lot of damage. The bird fell to the arena floor, winded, and only had time to look up as another rock came hurtling down.

It slammed into the pidgeotto's wing, crushing it.

The bird swooned, then fell to the ground, unconscious.

"Pidgeotto is unable to battle. Round and match goes to the challenger," the referee said in a tone that was much more bored than Risa wanted it to be.

Pseudo stood up tall again, a proud yet solemn look on his face. Risa, on the other hand, jumped into the air and shrieked. She'd won! She'd actually _won_! Not just defeated one of Faulkner's pokemon, but both of them. _She'd won a gym badge!_

On the other side of the arena, Faulkner had already returned his pidgeotto and given both pokeballs to an attendant. "Heal them, please," he said as she nodded, took the capsules, and disappeared down a staircase. After she left, he strode across the arena, lightly picking his way around the rocky rubble, to Risa and Pseudo. "Good match," he said with a smile. "I'm glad you had another pokemon this time."

Risa felt her cheeks color a bit. He remembered her and her inability to prepare for a gym battle. How embarrassing! "Um, y-yeah..."

Faulkner chuckled. "Well, good job with your rechallenge. Here - here's the Zephyr Badge," he said as he handed Risa a silvery, double-wing-shaped medallion. "Good day, miss." He bowed, then walked back over to the staircase on the gym leader's side.

"Would you like a picture?"

"What?" Risa looked up to see the attendant standing next to her with a camera.

The attendant smiled. "I can take a picture of you and your winning team and email it to you. You want a picture?"

"Y-yeah! That'd be great! Hold on." She dropped Heat's pokeball, revealing a somewhat sooty cyndaquil. "Heat! We won!"

He looked up at her solemnly. "_Of course we did. I was awesome._"

Risa rolled her eyes, not wanting to add that Pseudo was more awesome than him. She then had to busy herself with posing her two pokemon for the picture, since neither Heat nor Pseudo seemed to understand anything about tilting their head to be more photogenic.

A genuine smile appeared on her face for the picture as she held out the badge for all to see.

Eighteen more days. A Hive Badge was _definitely_ doable before then, she thought.

_Totally_ doable.

...Totally...

---

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Author's Note: I've written better battles...but hey, at least Risa can finally leave Violet City, right? Oh, and I know a couple of you have expressed interest about the book. Don't worry, it's coming back. Just be patient.


	12. Return Fire

**Chapter 12: Return Fire**

Risa stood inside her Pokemon Center room, repacking everything into her backpack. During her week there, she'd sort of strewn all her clothes and things everywhere. It wasn't like anybody minded - the room would be cleaned once she left, and her various roommates were usually just as messy.

She stared at a few things she'd put on the bed, trying to find their respective item capsules (or at least empty ones to stuff them in), while she ordered Heat to look around the room to make she hadn't forgotten anything. He didn't take her orders all that seriously; mostly he just waddled around and muttered to himself.

Although he did find one of Risa's stray socks. That was nice of him.

Pseudo, on the other hand, stood near the doorway, pretending to be a tree.

Apparently, as he told her over breakfast, pretending to be a tree was his way of relaxing and meditating, and if he didn't take a certain amount of time out of each day to pretend he was some sort of plant life, bad things would happen.

Considering how short a time it took for him to wipe the floor with Faulkner's pidgeotto and how he probably wouldn't take much longer with Heat, Risa decided it would be better to avoid these "bad things".

So, basically, Risa was doing all the packing herself.

She finally got all her clothes and pokemon-related items put away, and all she had left lying on her bed were a few things that she didn't want to minimize or didn't have item capsules for:

Two of those items were Heat and Pseudo's respective pokeballs, since, after all, there really was no point in putting them in item capsules when minimized pokeballs were the exact size of the capsules. Plus, it would just mean taking longer to release one of her pokemon, which in the case of Pseudo's "bad things" (or something else along those lines), would not be a good thing.

Another was her Pokegear-brand cell phone, which she kept out in case anybody called her. Her mother and father liked calling her at odd times during the evenings and always seemed rather irritated when she didn't pick up, so Risa kept the phone out at all times so she could hear it ring.

The fourth item was her zephyr badge, shining brightly in the sunlight from the window. Risa heard that item capsules could sometimes degrade the quality of metal items, such as jewelry, and she didn't want to take that chance with her precious badge. Plus, the badge was pretty, and she wanted to keep it that way. She also had out a blue velvet pin box she bought at the PokeMart to hold badges and keep them from getting nicked or scratched, and she didn't feel like putting that in an item capsule, either.

The final object was the strange book she bought at the book sale. For some reason, Risa couldn't bring herself to put the book in an item capsule. It just didn't seem...right. Of course it was ridiculous to think that way, but a voice at the back of Risa's mind told her the book was important somehow.

But that was nonsense.

"One sec, you guys," Risa said as she stuffed the book and her cell phone into her backpack's main compartment, pinned the badge inside the new velvet box and put that next to the book, and picked up the two pokeballs. "Okay, I'm all done. Ready to go?"

Heat groaned. "_Fiiiiinally! Ugh, you were taking foreeeever._"

Pseudo didn't say anything. He was still pretending to be a tree.

---

It had been more than an hour and a half since they had set foot on Route 32, and already things were going well, and for Risa, this was unusual but welcome.

For one thing, Pseudo seemed to be much more powerful than any of the wild pokemon they encountered, taking no more than three attacks to dispatch any of them. Heat wasn't doing too badly, either, and hadn't lost a single wild pokemon battle.

Then again, whenever a wild pokemon seemed to be getting the upper hand, he would just yell, "_Pseudooooo!_" at the top of his lungs and let the rock-type fake tree take care of it. This only happened a couple times, though, whenever he ran into a wooper or an ekans. (Heat didn't like snakes because he somewhat resembled a mouse, and snakes literally ate mice for breakfast. He told Risa that when he evolved into a quilava he would beat up ten ekans at once with his eyes closed and his front paws tied behind his back, but until then: "_Pseudooooo!_")

Risa's spirits were high. The sun was in the sky with only a few wispy clouds, a pleasant breeze kept the temperature warm but not hot, and her pokemon seemed to be doing unusually well in getting her through the route. Why didn't she catch a super powerful rock-type sooner?

Then her whole day fell apart when she heard somebody that wasn't Heat yell, "Pseudo!"

All three turned their heads around to see a dark-haired girl running towards them, a ledian following in the air behind her. The girl looked a couple years older than Risa and her ledian looked pretty strong because of that.

Risa suddenly felt nervous. A strong trainer that had been training for _years_? She'd only been out for a couple of weeks!

As she approached, Pseudo neatly finished off a nearby wooper with a rock throw, then turned to the newcomer with a huge smile on his smooth, rocky face. "_Crys!_"

Risa didn't know whether to feel relieved or really worried. This girl was Pseudo's real trainer? While it did mean the girl wouldn't be _attacking _them...it did mean that she probably wanted Pseudo back.

If Pseudo went back with the girl, then it meant saying goodbye to beating every pokemon they came across in three attacks or fewer, and Risa wasn't sure if she wanted to say goodbye to that.

"Hey," the girl said as she and her ledian came up to Risa and her group. "Ohmigod, I can't believe you found Pseudo!"

Risa shifted her weight uncomfortably. "Um, yeah. So, um, you're...Crys?"

"_Yes! Yes, this is Crys!_" Pseudo said, running (slowly, and sort of wiggling "like a tree" as he did) to his old trainer. "_Crys, you're here, you're here!_"

The girl threw her arms around the rock tree and hugged it while Risa looked on uncomfortably. When the girl withdrew her arms and turned around to face Risa, Risa repeated her question: "So, you're Crys?"

"Yeah," the girl, Crys, said with a smile. "I mean, well, my name is actually Mariko Amaiwa - I'm from Blackthorn - but I usually have people call me Crystal. Or Crys, for short." She bowed. "So, what's your name?"

"Um, it's Risa. Risa Miyamoto. I'm, um, from New Bark Town."

"Ooooh, right right," Crys said, still grinning. "You were one of the other people getting a Pokedex from Professor Elm, right?"

Risa frowned. "Um, yeah."

"I remember now! You and a kid from Cherrygrove - kids of Professor Elm's friends from college, right?"

"Yeah. Uh, I mean, that's what my mom said, at least."

"Cool, cool." Crys shifted her weight and looked at Pseudo, causing Risa to feel even more uncomfortable than she had before. "So, uh, I'm really happy you found Pseudo, and stuff - I mean, especially since you also got a Pokedex, so that kind of makes us, like, friends already! - but I was wondering...could I have him back?"

Risa's immediate response was to say something along the lines of, "no way!" but from the way Pseudo was glaring daggers at her, she could only agree.

Two seconds later, it seemed, Crys's ledian was comet punching Pseudo's pokeball, and only a second after that, Pseudo was disappearing into a luxury ball that Crys had taken out.

She grinned, holding up the luxury ball. "All done! I got this ball imported from Hoenn - apparently there's been a lot of recall stuff going on with pokeballs produced in Kanto-Johto, so I thought it would be good to import from somewhere else."

The thought of buying capture devices, or anything, from out of the country caused Risa's eyes to bug out. "You can afford to _import_? All the way from _Hoenn_?"

Crys shrugged sheepishly. "I've, um, been making a lot of money...you know, winning battles, and stuff."

Heat stepped forward, making his presence known for the first time. "_How many badges?_"

Before Crys could answer, her up-until-then silent ledian sneered and said, "_Six. How many do you have?_"

"_...One. But it's a super awesome one. The FLYING badge. Bet you couldn't get that one._"

"_Actually,_" the ledian replied, stretching her wing-cover nonchalantly. "_I helped Crys get that one. I was her starter, so I'm her strongest pokemon, and even then, I was able to beat Faulkner's pidgey._"

"Sorry," Cry said, elbowing her ledian lightly. "That win kind of got to Lady's head. But seriously, I'm fourteen, and I've had her since I was ten, so she's actually pretty good."

"You've been training since you were ten, but only have six badges?" Risa asked, confused. Most serious trainers could get eight badges within a couple years.

The ledian, Lady, shot Crys a crippling glare. "Heh, well, um, no, not exactly. I got one badge when I was ten, back when my brother caught me a ledyba and I caught a gastly," she dropped a pokeball, causing a haunter to appear. She grinned, and Risa and Heat backed up. Ghosts were never fun to run into, even trained ones. "And she - oh, her name's Obake - and Lady got me the first badge. But I didn't really _like_ training, so I quit and did the whole school-thing at Nishihara Private Middle School in Blackthorn."

"_And then she failed the high school entrance test, so her dad swung her a deal with Professor Elm to do field studies with the Pokedex,_" the ghost, Obake, said lazily.

"You _failed_ the test?" Risa asked, aghast. Johto's high school entrance exams were probably scarier than training, but Risa didn't even want to think of failing. She wanted to be the half of the population that actually got to continue their education, not go to trade school or resort to professional training.

Crys glared at her ghost. "Um, yeah, I did. So, like Obake said, I decided to gather field data with this," she held up her Pokedex, "since my dad knows Professor Elm. And I got back into training, and I'm actually doing pretty well."

Risa sighed. "Yeah...guess you are. We were, too," she mumbled, scuffing her foot against the dirt. "Until you took away our best fighter."

"Wait! I know!"

"What?"

"Let's do temporary trading!" Crys exclaimed, eying Risa's cyndaquil. "I want a cyndaquil for my Pokedex, and you can get my ledian, haunter and bayleef - oh, I chose the chikorita! He's so cute! Oh, and for your trouble..." She turned around and dug through her bag. "I'll give you these!"

She held two items in her hand - one was a piece of charcoal cut in a rough diamond and strung on a necklace, and the other was an enhanced CD-like machine labeled "Solarbeam".

Risa looked at the items. "Um, what-?"

"Okay, so," Crys began, not waiting for Risa's question. "The charcoal boosts fire-type attack power if you wear it, so I thought your cyndaquil could use it better than I could, since I don't have any fire-type pokemon on my team. And I don't think that cyndaquils can learn to use solarbeam, but I know that typhlosions can, so I guess you could save this for later." She smiled at Risa. "You know, for when you have to, like, surprise people at the league. People usually don't expect fire-types to know grass-type moves. It could help against water-types, if you're brave enough, or, like, if you teach him to use sunny day." When Risa didn't answer, Crys looked down and added, "I'd give you a pokemon in exchange for Pseudo, since that is kind of the fair thing to do, but I usually do catch-and-release or send them back to Professor Elm if it's something he wants, so I don't have any pokemon with me that I'd give away. And I can't catch you anything, because the luxury ball I just used to recatch Pseudo was my last pokeball, so...sorry, but these items are all I can give you." Then she brightened. "But I can help you train, too! How 'bout that?"

Under Crys's incessant chatter, Risa somehow found herself agreeing to the temporary trades and exchange of the two items for returning Pseudo. Heat ended up convincing himself that Crys was going to be the future Johto champion, not only by beating the current champion, Lance, but by going the extra mile and actually taking his job. This meant that she was his new idol, and that her bayleef, Mega, became his new best friend. (Apparently, he hadn't met any of the other "starter" pokemon back at the lab.)

Risa wanted to explain to him that actually taking the _job_ of the Johto champion involved more than just defeating the reigning champion, since there was a significant amount of paperwork and tests involved, but he wouldn't listen.

Crys ended up being pretty nice about the whole thing, too, spending the day with Risa and helping her train against her bayleef (who took the constant embers pretty well, considering his head-leaf almost got burnt off).

It wasn't until the end of the day, when Crys was packing up to leave north and Risa ready to go south, that something else happened.

At the very last second, Crys's haunter, Obake, floated away from her team and over to Risa. "_Risa,_" she said in a soft voice unlike the hateful snarl she seemed to have used the entire day. "_What are you doing with that book?_"

"W-what book?" she asked, looking around to see if anybody was listening. Heat, apparently, had dashed over to talk to Crys, Lady, and Mega, and they were so engrossed in their conversation that none of them noticed Risa talking to Obake. "I-I don't -"

"_I know you know what I'm talking about. The black one in your bag,_" she snapped. "_Look, I don't know what you're doing with it or how you got it, and I'm not exactly sure what it is myself, but I'm going to say this: be careful._"

The trainer in question pulled on her backpack straps extra tightly, feeling the weight of the tome. "Um, o-okay."

"_Can you read it?_"

"N-no, it's in some weird language. Only...er, well..."

"_Only...?_"

Risa bit her lip. "There's a word on the cover I can read. I think it's the title. It's called 'Grimoire', like a spell book."

The haunter visibly flinched. "_Anything else?_"

"Um...well..." Obake glared at her, daring her to trail off. Risa gulped, and didn't. "T-there was something inside. I wasn't reading the book, just flipping through, and I found, um, this list..."

"_Do you know what it was listing?_"

"N-no, but it was titled in letters I knew. It said something like 'Haelliad', but that's not a real word."

Obake frowned. "_I don't know that word, either. How many items in the list?_"

"There were two lists," Risa remembered aloud, "two lists of twelve items. So, um, I guess that would be twenty-four." She paused, then remembered something.

"_Anything else about the list?_"

"Not that I remember. Um, it looked pretty normal...just, like, a list. Or, um, two lists, I guess."

The haunter sighed, then glared at Risa again. "_You look like a nice girl, not somebody who should be getting mixed up with anything like what this might be. But I'm going to tell you this the best I can: don't get too mixed up with ghosts._"

Risa glanced at Crys, who was busy making hand motions and causing Heat to roll around with laughter. Obake's comment seemed strange coming from a ghost who had been with a trainer for four years. "Um, okay..."

A pair of narrowed eyes met hers when she turned back, making her shudder. "_I should also tell you that if you wish to learn more about the book, you should go there._" She held out one of her detached purple hands and pointed a claw to the west, towards the pale brown, crumbling stone towers poking out of the tree tops. "_The Ruins of Alph. I would advise you against it, but it might be,_" she grinned, giving Risa another shiver up her spine, "_interesting._"

"Obake!" Crys called. "Time to go!"

"_I bid you good evening, Risa Miyamoto of New Bark Town,_" Obake said with a grin. "_And I wish you well on your journey, as well as pity you if what you have in your backpack brings you an early death._"

And then she was gone, floating after her trainer and fellow teammates.

Heat looked up at Risa from the ground. "_I like them. Let's invite them to watch when we take on the champion and become even more super awesome than we are now. They can see my future super awesome solarbeam attack! Pew, pew!_" he shouted as he pretended to shoot off a solarbeam. It looked a bit more to Risa like he was having some sort of seizure, but Heat seemed to be having a good time pretending, so she didn't stop him.

"Hey, Heat, where do you think we should go next?" Risa asked, eyeing the path that lead to the Ruins of Alph. It stretched off at a ninety-degree angle to the path they were currently on, the one that connected Violet City to the eastern mouth of Union Cave.

Risa figured that Heat would probably choose to continue on to Union Cave, since he seemed anxious to get more badges so he could be just as cool as Mega the bayleef. That meant she wouldn't need to go to the Ruins of Alph, and that creepy ghost Crys had wouldn't have to affect her as much.

As long as Heat made the decision, she thought, everything would be fine. She wouldn't have to feel guilty about missing the chance to find out more about the book if she passed up on the Ruins of Alph, and she wouldn't have to feel guilty about possibly endangering their lives by making them take the detour.

Yes. As long as Heat decided, everything would be fine.

Heat pondered the decision for a moment, rising up on his hind legs as if to get a better view. Then he pointed. "_That way! I wanna see what kind of pokemon live there, and then I can beat 'em, and then we can come back and then go the way we were going._"

The pit of Risa's stomach plummeted.

He was pointing towards the tips of the Ruins of Alph towers, silhouetted neatly by the almost liquid-looking sunset.

Seventeen days left, and they were going to spend at least one of those days in a possibly life-threatening ruined city.

Either that, or Risa was just being paranoid because Crys's haunter freaked her out. Ghosts did that to people, after all.

But the seventeen days left part, _that _was certain.

---

Disclaimer: I don't own pokemon.

Author's note: I feel like this chapter doesn't hang together as well as other chapters have...oh well. Story's gotta move on, right? Oh, and Crys(tal) is the main character from the game Pokemon Crystal, in case that wasn't obvious enough. This whole story takes place during a game of Pokemon Crystal where the player chooses the female character and the chikorita. Risa and Ichiro are just "extras" that don't show up in the game. ;)


	13. Smoldering: Part 1

**Chapter 13: Smoldering - Part 1**

"This place is actually pretty cool," Risa said as they walked around the Ruins of Alph. They had camped outside the entrance to the site, since while Risa had accepted Heat's proposal to go "beat up all the pokemon inside even though they might be scary and big because they were kind of a mystery", she didn't want to have to do it in the dark. So, when Heat woke Risa up with the sunrise, they packed up and headed in.

Now they were walking around the Ruins in a fresh, crisp morning with the rosy light of the sunrise still giving the tan rocks of the crumbling structures a pink tinge. It actually looked pretty cool, and Risa wished she had a camera.

Then she remembered her cell phone could take pictures, and immediately started acting the annoying tourist until Heat yelled at her to put the phone away. (She did.)

They walked around for awhile, exploring as much of the site as they could without going inside any of the structures. (Risa told Heat she didn't want to go inside yet until they had scoped out the entire site in case the wild pokemon were outside, though she really was just putting off the inevitable in case the pokemon inside the structures were big and scary.)

Then, finally:

"_This is boring,_" Heat whined after about an hour of walking around the site. "_Where are the pokemon?_"

Risa shrugged, though she glanced quickly at one of the structures open to visitors. "Um, I dunno. Maybe they're in an area we can't get to - like one of those buildings, or something," she said, pointing to the buildings built into the hill and across the small lake on the site.

Her cyndaquil groaned. "_There's gotta be SOMETHING we can beat up. If there isn't, then this was a waste of time, and that's just stupid, 'cause it's not like we're on a stupid school field trip, or anything. We,_" he added with a serious glance towards his trainer, "_are future champions, no matter how much you wanna go back to your stupid school at the end of the summer. Which is stupid._"

"Yeah, you said it was stupid, like, five billion times already."

Heat groaned. "_I'm hungry._"

"Fine." Risa sat down on the path, arms crossed. "Then we'll have lunch."

"_It's too early to have lunch._"

"I don't care."

"_Fine!_"

"Fine!"

And with that, Risa grabbed some trail mix and nutrition bars, since she didn't have it in her to actually try and put together anything else, and gave Heat a pack of pokemon food. He looked from the pack of food to her two nutrition bars, and back, then at her.

She sighed, mumbled a "whatever", threw him one of her bars, and ate her lunch in silence.

---

"_Okay, so I think this was a waste of time._"

"Shut UP, Heat, I don't care," Risa snapped. It had been two hours since their lunch, and they still hadn't found anything. They had briefly gone inside one of the buildings open to the public, but it had been pretty empty. Heat decided that meant the buildings weren't important on the insides, and that they should try to climb up one of them on the outside.

Long story short, that idea hadn't worked out so well.

With the sun high overhead, neither Heat nor Risa had great attitudes about the whole thing, either. "_Why did you think this was a good idea? This is BORING,_" Heat said, trailing slowly behind Risa as they walked around the Ruins of Alph for what seemed like the thousandth time. "_Nothing's HERE. Everything DIED. There aren't even ghosts because it's too BORING._"

Risa glared at him. "Heat, this was your idea, so you can't blame me."

"_I don't care. It's your fault._"

"How is it my fault?"

"_It is. You're the trainer. I'm just s'posed to follow you, so it's your fault,_" Heat snapped.

This kind of made Risa want to kick him, but since that was also kind of against the law and she didn't want to be arrested for pokemon abuse, she refrained. "Um, I let you decide, so it's your fault."

"_No, it's not. It's your fault!_"

"It's not my fault! It's all your fault!"

"_Nuh-uhhh!"_

"Yuh-huhhhh!"

"_You're stupid._"

"No, you're stupid!"

"_YOU'RE STUPID AND LET'S GO INSIDE BECAUSE IT'S HOT,_" Heat yelled before stomping back into one of the buildings he had previously deemed too empty and boring to stay in.

Without answering, Risa stomped in after him, staring at the same bare-walls chamber she had seen before.

Heat was standing in the middle of the room, pouting near a stone wall with reddish tiles. Risa stood next to him, not talking but happy to be out of the blazing sunlight.

She leaned against the tile pattern and had to suppress a shriek when one of the tiles _moved._

Turning around, she saw that the tile in question, the one she accidentally must have pushed with her head when she leaned against it, had a tan line carved into it. It was so covered in dust that the line looked almost invisible against the red tile back, but it was there in a curve arcing from the top right to the middle of the left side.

Peering closely at the other tiles, she saw that there were similar lines on each of them. Two of them even had lines that matched up, making their tan arcs into a full semicircle opening right.

Risa frowned, then looked down at Heat. He didn't return her glance, and just kept staring at the entrance to the building. It seemed clear to Risa that Heat wasn't opening his mouth anytime soon, which she didn't find disappointing whatsoever.

So, instead, she turned back to the tiles. "I wonder if it's some kinda puzzle," she muttered, then glanced down at Heat. He either hadn't heard her or had and decided to ignore her.

Either way, she didn't care. She liked puzzles. Possibly more than her stubborn cyndaquil, in fact.

Placing her hand on another tile, she slid it downward, matching it up with an arc on the one below. It seemed to be making a sort of circular picture with lines in the middle...

Focusing on the puzzle on the wall, since it had to have been the most interesting thing she'd come across all day, she kept sliding the tiles back and forth, up and down.

"_Risa?_"

She ignored him, trying to make the picture instead. Slide, slide, slide went the tiles as she moved them around.

"_Hey, Risa?_"

Slide, slide, slide.

"_Hey! Idiot!_"

Slide, slide - done!

"_RISA WHAT DID YOU JUST -"_

He didn't have time to finish. The ground had already started to rumble, and as the finish picture caused a flash of recognition in Risa's mind - a fossil of some sort, one found in Kanto - the stone slab she and Heat had been standing on fell away.

They were falling through a stone chute, one covered in strange letters.

As they fell, the letters peeled off the wall, growing and crying out, swarming around them and separating them.

Risa and Heat landed in a stone chamber they recognized from before as one they had briefly explored - a stone maze deep underground.

But just before they fell through the chute and into the maze, something happened - something that _shouldn't _have happened.

The chute and the chamber _should_ have been connected.

But they obviously _weren't,_ because just as Risa fell from the chute to the top of the maze chamber, she saw a break in the stone, one that looked out onto the Ruins of Alph from an angle that didn't make any sense.

They had gone inside the stone room when it was around noon, and there had been a few tourists walking around.

Those same tourists, wearing the same clothes they had been before, were now exiting the ruins. The sky was dark, and the sun had almost set all the way.

When Risa hit the floor, she realized four things. That wasn't a good sign right off the bat - four was an unlucky number. It meant "death".

One of those things was that she couldn't see Heat.

The second: there was a cloud of letter-shaped pokemon all around her, brimming with energy and not looking too happy.

Thirdly, because of the fact that a too-long amount of time had gone by since they entered the puzzle room and came out in the maze room, she only had sixteen days left of her adventure.

And last - and fourth, the "grimoire" book seemed unusually heavy in her backpack, and that was perhaps what scared Risa most of all.

---

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Author's Note: So the four/death thing: the number four is considered unlucky in Japan because the word "shi" can mean both "four" and "death". Also, this is the first part of a three-part story arc in the Ruins of Alph - I wasn't sure how long each section would be, and they seemed to break apart into three sections pretty well, so I thought splitting it into three chapters would be a good idea. They will all have the same title, though, "Smoldering", because they are the same arc.


	14. Smoldering: Part 2

**Chapter 14: Smoldering - Part 2**

Risa hit the floor of the maze room, feeling the cold and crumbling stone dig into her knees and elbows. She winced and curled up on herself, pulling her bloody knees and elbows in as she regressed into a fetal position.

The strange letter-shaped pokemon kept slamming against her, screeching and glowing and emanating strange, sphere-shaped wisps. The wisps hit her back, burning and freezing and everything in between.

Spots splashed up against her closed lids, and she whimpered. Her mind seemed to be going blank, and nothing around her seemed to help.

All around her were the letters.

Heat was nowhere to be seen.

All she could see was letters, the crumbling brown stones, and...her backpack, which the letters tore at when she fell into the room. One of the straps was ripped, making it easy for the bag to slip off her shoulder and onto the floor where it lay.

She slowly and feebly extended a hand towards it, and the letters didn't seem to notice. Pulling herself along the gravely floor to it, she managed to put both hands on the bag. Her mind didn't seem to follow along as she unzipped the backpack, pulled out the book, and held it up to the swarming letters like a shield.

Then they all screamed and fled, just like that.

As realization dawned in Risa's mind, she brought the book down, trying to figure out what happened and what to do next.

But she didn't have to wonder about the latter, because before she knew it, Heat was hurling himself out her, shouting: "_RISA!"_

She blinked as she felt his warm body clutch at her arm. "Heat?"

"_Yes, it's me! Those letter-things are WEIRD,_" he said, crawling into her lap. "_What's going on? Where are we?_"

Risa stared at him, confused. "I - I don't know."

Heat sighed, then looked at Risa's book. "_Did that make the letters go away?_"

"Uh, yeah," Risa said as she looked at the book in her hand. She barely remembered how it got there, much less whether or not it made the letters go away. It was as if she'd been in some sort of trance. "I guess it...kinda...did."

"_I think that book is weird._"

"Y-yeah, maybe," she began to smile, "or maybe you just don't know any word other than 'weird'. You use that word a lot. I think - heheh - 'I think that word does not mean what you think it means'."

Heat looked up at her strangely when she started to giggle. "_Um, I think it means what I think it means. It means something's weird. Duh._"

Risa just waved her hand. "Never mind, never mind."

Then silence fell over them. Finally: "_So, smart one, how are we getting out of here?_"

"...I...don't know."

"_...Idiot._"

---

"Okay, so, you get the plan?"

"_I get the plan._"

"Are you sure you understand the plan?"

"_I am sure I understand the plan._"

"Are you really sure? 'Cause you're not really so good at -"

"_I GET THE STUPID PLAN. Can we just get this over with?_"

"Fine." Risa slipped the book back in her bag and zipped it shut, though she wore the bag backwards, along her stomach, for easy access. "Ready?"

"_Ready,_" replied her blazing cyndaquil, hunched down in what he assumed was a "battle position".

Then they waited for a moment, and then the letters came back.

Heat began blasting embers up at them, trying to pinpoint one to attack and weaken. Risa shrieked as they attacked her just as much as they attacked her pokemon, and tried to swat them away with no avail. She just closed her eyes, flailed around, and waited as best she could.

"_NOW!_"

Risa opened her eyes, ripped open her bag, and whipped out the book, holding it in one hand above her head. Once again, the pack of letters shrieked and began to dissipate, running off to other corridors. During the chaos, she used her other hand to grab a pokeball.

"_Here!_" Heat yelled from a little ways away as he tried his best to pin down a struggling, burnt letter D. "_Get it, get it!_"

Risa jumped forward, still holding the book above her head, and dropped the pokeball on the letter. It disappeared inside the ball, and the ball wriggled for a considerable amount of time before stopping.

Meanwhile, all the rest of the letters had left, leaving Risa and Heat in a silent, crumbling, rune-covered hallway.

"_Did we get it?_" Heat asked, sniffing the pokeball.

His trainer sighed, sinking down next to him. "I - I think so. I, uh, guess we were right about them being some kinda pokemon," she muttered, picking up the pokeball. "I hope it doesn't, like, attack us, or something. You know, when we let it out, or something."

Heat shrugged, the adrenaline of the battle already starting to wear off. "_Whatever. I already beat it up once, I can do it again._"

"Uh-huh," Risa mumbled, getting out her Pokedex and translator. After running through the ball through both machines, she brought up the stats on her new pokemon. "Okay, so it's 'unown'."

"_Wait - what? It's unknown?_" Heat narrowed his squinty eyes. "_I think your little machine-thing is glitchy._"

The Pokedex-holder shook her head. "It's an 'unown', as in the pokemon...I guess. Um, and it's shaped like the letter 'D' -"

"_I could have said that much._"

"As I was _saying_, it's genderless, and it's the 'symbol pokemon' and a psychic type. Um, it also says: 'because different types of unown exist, it is said they must have a variety of abilities,'" Risa read. She looked up. "I wonder what that means."

Heat shrugged. "_Don't look at me. But it was attacking with ice._"

"Ice? But it says here it's a psychic type."

"_Well, then it must be a stupid one, 'cause it was using ice. It was like...throwing little white rocks at me, and the rocks melted when they hit me and turned to water._" He nodded sagely. "_Ice._"

His trainer snorted. "Wow, you are _sooo_ smart."

"_Shut up, idiot. Open the ball so I can talk to the stupid thing and show it who's boss._"

"Only do that if it attacks us," Risa said as she carefully opened the pokeball. Once again, they found themselves looking at a strange, floating letter "D" with a large eye in the center of the letter.

It's single eye narrowed at the sight of them. "_Who are you?_"

Risa smiled shakily, a little unnerved by the fact that androgynous voice of the unown didn't seem to come from anywhere, as the unown had no clear mouth. "U-um, m-my name is Risa Miyamoto, and I'm a trainer from New Bark Town, and this is -"

"_I don't care about THAT_," snapped the unown. "_What I want to know is who you ARE. What role you play._"

Heat and Risa exchanged a confused glance. "What...role I play?"

"_Yes,_" the unown said, clearly getting frustrated. "_Why do you have that - that book._" It motioned with its body towards the book Risa left on the ground. "_Tell me who you are._"

Risa slowly picked up the book, staring at it for a moment or two. "Um, I told you," she said quietly. "My name is Risa Miyamoto. I'm your trainer now. And -"

"_How. Did. You. Get. That. Book._"

"...I bought it." Risa glanced down at it. "At a book sale. It was pretty cheap."

The unown growled. "_And you expect me to get directly involved with this?_"

Heat sniggered. "_Seriously? It's a book! Relax, idiot, or else you'll get a mouthful of embers. Again. Wait -_" he frowned, "_make that an eyeful, 'cause you don't look like you have a mouth. Weeeeee-eird._"

"Heat, be nice," hissed his trainer. She then turned back to the d-shape. "So, um, do you have a name?"

The unown sighed. "_No. I don't need one - I'm fine with nothing._"

"_Name it 'Nothing'. C'mon, do it! It'll be funny!_" Heat whispered with an evil grin on his long snout.

Risa shrugged. "Okay...how 'bout 'Nanimo'?"

"_I told you, I don't care,_" the unown, now Nanimo, snapped. "_And don't call me 'it'. I prefer 'she'._"

"But you're genderless," Risa said, checking back to her Pokedex screen. "It says so right here."

A small ice ball shot out of Nanimo's body striking Risa on the shoulder. "_Silence! You're going to trust a strange contraption over my own opinion on my gender?_"

"N-no..."

"_Good! Then answer my first question._" She floated closer, staring down her new trainer with her immense eye. "_Why do you have that book?_"

"I bought it at a -"

"_I don't want to know how you got it. I want to know WHY._"

Risa opened her mouth to answer, then thought of something. "Wait - why do you even care? How do you know anything about it?" She paused, then straightened up. "You _do_ know something about it! Tell me!"

Nanimo growled again, floating around the corridor as if she were pacing. "_I can already tell you're going to be infuriating to deal with. Now, you said your name was Risa, right?_"

"_Yeah, idiot, she said so already,_" Heat mumbled, but stopped talking when Risa glared at him.

"Yeah."

"_What does it mean?_"

"Um, it's made up of the characters for 'reason' and 'yarn'."

Nanimo stayed silent for a moment. "_Interesting...yet you use that contraption to figure things out. Do you have an English name?"_

Risa shrugged. "Um, well, my parents just said my English name would be Lisa."

"_Meaning?_"

"Like...what 'Lisa' means?"

"_Yes. What does it mean?_"

Risa thought for a moment. "Um...I don't know. There's no character or anything for it...since it's English..."

After a few moments of silence broken only by Heat's mutterings, Nanimo sighed. "_Well, I suppose it's good enough for now. You said I'm your pokemon now, right?_" Risa nodded. "_I'll go with you, though I want to make it clear I don't want to. I also want you to know that this book you purchased is one of the most horrid objects I know of._" She swiveled her eye to look at it, then recoiled. "_And you don't seem like the kind of person to get out of it alive._"

Risa gulped, though she didn't quite know why. Her new pokemon had only been on her team for a few minutes, and now she was already saying Risa would die because of a _book._ "What - what do you mean?"

Before Nanimo could say anything, Heat interrupted with a loud shriek of: "_WEIRD THINGS! WEIRD THINGS!_"

And, sure enough, another unown cloud descended upon them.

---

An hour later, they had defeated the cloud. Risa had been hit with more kinds of circling aura spheres than she could think of, and sported burns, bruises, and everything in between. None of them were that bad, but she still felt sore all over, even when she applied salves.

Heat, on the other hand, seemed to be doing pretty well. Begrudgingly, Nanimo helped him pattern his ember attacks to match the unowns' onslaught of hidden powers, exploding some of the spheres before they hit anything. She also yelled at him about how to dodge the attacks, when to run and when to take the offensive, and where to aim for.

They spent the rest of the day walking along the corridors, Heat being their primary offensive strike against the wild pokemon. While Heat did seem to be getting stronger - and so did Nanimo - there was one problem.

There didn't seem to be a way out.

"_It's your fault, you know,_" Nanimo said when Risa realized she'd just spent an entire day down in the maze. "_You were the one who brought that book._"

"You won't even tell me what this book is!" spat the girl, sounding more impatient than she felt. All she wanted to do was get out of there, find a Pokemon Center, and curl up inside a nice, warm bed. She didn't want her new pokemon to know that, though, and didn't really feel like confessing to Heat that she didn't like "beating up all the weird things".

Nanimo glared at her again. "_We do not speak of it. It's going to destroy you, you know,_" she added.

Risa groaned. "You keep saying that! Why do you keep _saying_ that? You never say anything _else,_ so I don't believe you."

"_Yeah,_" Heat said after blowing a mouthful of embers at a lone attacking letter "B" unown with a grass-type hidden power. Needless to say, it didn't stand much of a chance. "_Stop saying Risa's gonna get destroyed. She won't get destroyed! Not when she's got me!_" He puffed up his chest in pride. "_Future champion, most awesome unown-beater-upper of all time. I'm so awesome._"

Their unown teammate scoffed. "_That attitude won't save you, although you might not be in as much danger._"

Rolling her eyes, Risa put her backpack down and started taking out camping supplies.

"_What are you doing?_" Nanimo demanded, floating above Risa's head.

"Getting my sleeping back out," she snapped, doing just that. "I'm tired, and it's nighttime, anyway. I'm going to sleep."

Nanimo stayed silent as Risa took off her shirt and shorts and put on pink pajamas, though she growled when Risa put the grimoire next to her pillow. "_You're doing that to spite me, aren't you?_"

"Yes," Risa said, laying a hand on the cover of the book. "I'll keep it out until you tell me more. I know you know more than you're saying."

Heat sat near Risa's head, trying to stay alert in case another unown cloud ambushed. The dim light in the corridor flickered when he stretched and moved his back flames, but even through it all, Risa could see Nanimo staring down at her as she closed her eyes to go to sleep.

"_It will destroy you unless you find a way to become important,_" Nanimo whispered. "_If it doesn't think you're important, you're going to die just like all the others._"

Risa squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to go to sleep.

"_That sunrise will never happen. You'll be dead. And it will be all your fault._"

Fifteen days left.

---

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon. I also don't own The Princess Bride or the quote from it.

Author's Note: I'm having my wisdom teeth out on Tuesday (so two days from now), and I'm not sure how that's going to affect my ability to write. I'm going to TRY to get another chapter up tomorrow, but after that, it might be a week until I write again. I'm just not sure. So just be aware...if I don't respond/update, it might be because four teeth got ripped out of my mouth.


	15. Smoldering: Part 3

**Chapter 15: Smoldering - Part 3**

"Okay, so," Risa said around noon the next day as Heat and Nanimo finished off the latest cloud of unown. Thanks to Nanimo's insight onto unown battle tactics (which didn't seem to be that complicated once you figured out that they just swarmed and hoped for the best), her team was able to beat back whatever set of letters came at them. It got easier and easier with each battle, as long as Risa made sure not to let her two pokemon's injuries get out of hand, and watching both Heat and Nanimo get stronger helped calm her nerves a bit. However: "We have a problem."

"_What?_" Heat asked, stretching a bit. "_We're beating the weird things easily. I see no problem. Or is it just that you feel threatened by our awesomeness - especially MY awesomeness?_"

"_We aren't 'weird things,'"_ Nanimo muttered as she floated away from Heat. "_We're unown. Get it right._"

"_No._"

"_I really don't like you._"

"_You're weirder than Risa._"

"_Actually, I find myself hating you._"

"_You're weird and -_"

"Knock it off!" Risa yelled, standing in between her two pokemon. They'd been throwing borderline-unfriendly banter between each other for the entire day, and it had been getting less and less creative. "I was gonna say that our problem is that we can't find a way out!"

Nanimo floated up and down in a sort of levitated shrug. "_It really shouldn't be that hard._"

"_Okay,_" Heat said, poking his head around Risa's ankle to glare at his teammate. "_Then why aren't we out yet?_"

The unown shrugged again. "_Inferior intellect?_"

Risa nudged Heat in the side before he could say anything else. "Nanimo, are you sure you don't want to tell us how to get out?"

"_I told you before,_" she snapped, "_I don't want to help that book._"

"You're not helping the book, you're helping me...your...um...trainer?"

"_I can't say that exactly makes me want to help you. That means associating myself with the book._"

Risa groaned. "Shut up about the book already!"

"_No._"

"Okay, fine, but the book is safely away in my backpack, and you won't even tell me more about it." Risa crossed her arms and shifted her weight into what she hoped was an intimidating position. "You need to be more helpful."

Nanimo stared at her from across the corridor, floating near a message written in letters that resembled unown. "_May I ask why I have to be helpful?_"

"Because otherwise, we don't get to leave this maze."

"_And that would be bad for me...why, exactly?_"

Risa just groaned.

---

Two hours later, the same thing seemed to be happening:

"Can you _please_ tell me how to get out?"

"_Or me?_" Heat asked hopefully.

Nanimo shrugged. "_I really don't feel like it._"

"_I hate that thing,_" Heat muttered.

"_I am female!_"

"_No you're not - ow!"_ the cyndaquil grunted as Nanimo hurled an ice ball at him. "_That hurt!"_

---

Three hours later...

"What about the book? Can you tell me more about that?" Risa asked as they walked along yet another dimly lit corridor. "Maybe about how you said I was gonna die?"

"_You're going to die._"

"Yeah, I know, you said so already, and it's not scary when you say it now because you told me, like, a bajillion times," the girl said, kicking a pebble down the corridor until she couldn't see it anymore.

"_I don't mean to scare you, just tell you the facts._"

"You need to tell me more facts, then!" Risa yelled, turning to face Nanimo. "You're not being helpful at all!"

No emotion seemed to go across Nanimo's face. She just stared back, floating calmly at Risa's eye level. "_We've been down this road before, Miss Trainer. I don't see any reason to be overly helpful towards you. You seem like a lost cause no matter what."_

"And what's that s'posed to mean?"

"_You're going to die, and if I stick around, you might drag me down, too,_" Nanimo explained with a small shrug. "_I don't feel particularly keen on dying, and, in case you hadn't noticed, I don't come from a particularly strong species, hence why your blabbering cyndaquil has been able to defeat so many unown clouds. If you get sucked into this - which you will - then I won't be able to protect myself."_

"Protect yourself from _what?_" Risa demanded, tugging at her hair. It was no longer in pigtails, as that required too much work and she couldn't sleep at all the previous night. Crumbling mazes did not make for good bedrooms.

Nanimo gave her yet another a hard stare. "_The end of the world._"

If Risa hadn't been so frustrated and tired at that point, she might have gasped. Instead, she just rolled her eyes. "Well, now we're getting somewhere. Now, maybe you'd like to say how the world is going to end?"

"_No._"

The trainer sighed, then started walking in the direction Heat had started to waddle in. "You're really annoying."

Behind her, Nanimo whispered: "_I'm just warning you - if you stay the way you are now, doing what you're doing now, and going in the direction you're going now, you're going to die. I don't want to be around when that happens._"

"Fine!" Risa said, waving her arms around and almost slapping her unown. "I promise nothing's gonna happen, okay? We're not gonna die, I'll figure out a way to save the stupid world, and then we'll win the stupid Johto championships -"

"_Thank you!_" Heat called from ahead.

Risa rolled her eyes. "But in order for me to do that, you gotta help us get out. OKAY?"

She stared at Nanimo, waiting for an answer. Just as it dawned on her that she just promised to save the world - and she didn't know how closely her strange, ancient pokemon would hold her to that - Nanimo nodded. "_I'm going to hold you to that. I'm going to take this promise very seriously. Do you understand that you are entering into an agreement with a literal representation of your language?_"

Risa blinked. It sounded like Nanimo was taking things pretty seriously. That bit about saving the world really just rolled off her tongue as a retort, not a real promise. "Um, yes?"

When Nanimo floated closer, Risa realized that, "um, yes" was probably not the best thing to say. "_Good. We're going to make a deal: I will stay with you and help you as long as you keep your promise. As long as you keep your promise, I will do anything in my power to make sure you reach your goal._"

"Which...would be...?"

"_WINNING THE CHAMPIONSHIP!"_

Nanimo ignored Heat, keeping her eye on Risa. "_Saving the world. I hope you realize what you're getting into._"

Risa smiled shakily. "Uh, yeah, of course," she lied.

Really, all she wanted was a nice Pokemon Center meal and bed, or at least the chance to camp out outside.

Or, if this whole "making an agreement with an unown and then saving the world" thing was actually happening, then knowing why the world was in danger and how she was supposed to save it would be nice...

But she really did prefer the latter.

---

"_Here we are,_" Nanimo said as they reached the end of the corridor.

After a quick look around, Risa groaned for what seemed like the millionth time that day. "This is a dead end!"

"_Exactly._"

"How is that gonna get us out? There's nowhere to go!"

Nanimo floated closer to the wall. "_Shine your flashlight over here._"

Risa flicked her flashlight up towards where Nanimo was, squinting at the wall. For the first time that day, Heat had gotten overwhelmed by a recent pack of unown, and was currently sleeping it off in his pokeball after using up the last of Risa's potions. Luckily, Risa still had an emergency flashlight in case Heat ended up too tired to make his own light.

"_Do you see the writing here?_"

Squinting and leaning forward, Risa examined the wall and found a few scratched-in symbols resembling some of the unown that had attacked them. "Yeah, it's a bunch of pictures."

"_You can read it, can't you?_"

Risa studied the symbols for a minute. "Um, they kind of look like English letters."

"_...Do you mean to say you DIDN'T notice that before?_"

Sparing her unown a glare, Risa tried to match each symbol with an English letter, starting with "F", then "L", then "A"...

"It's says the English word 'flash'," Risa said, turning back around to face Nanimo. "I don't get it."

Nanimo groaned. "_Your cyndaquil knows the attack flash, right?_"

"Right."

"_So get him to do it here,_" the unown said slowly, sounding more than a little exasperated. "_I'm actually rather surprised it wasn't obvious._"

Risa rolled her eyes, taking Heat's pokeball out of her backpack. "I'm tired, okay? Heat, get out here!"

A moment later, her bedraggled cyndaquil appeared, looking more than a little ruffled and exhausted. "_Okay, do I really have to be here right now?_" the cyndaquil groaned, sounding quite a bit less enthusiastic than he had been a few hours prior. "_I'm tiiiiired._"

Risa ignored him. "Heat, use flash."

"_Do I have to? I'm tired. Use your flashlight._"

"Heat, do it."

"_But -_"

"Now!"

Heat groaned. "_Fine, fine, I'll do it._" He took a deep breath, then ignited his back in one brief burst of bright yellow light. The light lit the cavern, shining light on all the little details and cracks in the stone walls.

Risa had just enough time to blink before the ground dropped out from underneath their feet, sending the two pokemon and their trainer through another stone chute. She opened her mouth to scream, but when she did, a sudden wave of nausea wracked Risa's stomach and stopped her voice from working.

She hit some sort of floor with a thud, but she swooned and succumbed to vertigo before she could open her eyes to see where she landed.

---

"_Where am I?" Risa asked, looking around. She could see Nanimo floating next to her, but Heat didn't seem to be anywhere. "Where's Heat? Did we get separated again? What's going on?"_

"_This is the Land of the Unown," Nanimo replied, though her voice sounded distant, as if she and Risa were both underwater. "We are exempt from time here."_

_Risa blinked. "You're still not making sense."_

"_Am I?"_

"_Is this even real? It definitely feels like a weird dream," she said, crossing her arms and trying to give her unown an "attitude-filled" look, one she assumed meant that she was a teenager and she meant business._

_Even though she wasn't really a teenager yet - she was twelve. But she'd be thirteen eventually, and Nanimo didn't have to know she wasn't already._

_Before she could say anything, Nanimo began to fade away, a whispered, "is it?", floating in the air between them._

_Risa stared at the world around her, taking it in for the first time - she seemed to be in a nighttime world, one with tall stone towers and magnificent buildings covered in unown letters. Four of them peeled themselves off a wall and floated over, spelling out a word:_

"_Ho-oh."_

_Then the world seemed to implode on itself, and once again, Risa felt herself falling before she had a chance to scream._

---

"Hello?" Risa groaned, trying to swat away the new voice. "Are you okay?"

"Nnng..."

"Um, is that a yes or a no?"

"Mmm...'m fine..."

"Can you open your eyes?"

Risa finally pulled her eyelids apart, trying to find the source of the new voice so she could tell them to shut up. Once her eyes were open, she found herself looking at a red-haired teenaged girl with grey eyes. She blinked, trying to figure out if she knew the girl.

She didn't.

"Who are you?" Risa mumbled, putting a hand on her forehead. "Where am I? What - what time is it?"

The girl smiled. "Oh, good, you're okay. I was worried. Um, as for your questions...my name's Johanna, you're in the Ruins of Alph, and it's about six in the evening," the girl, Johanna, said in a pretty, soft voice. She flicked a strand of her shoulder length red hair out of her eyes, and Risa noticed a light green ring on her right middle finger.

"That's um, a nice ring," Risa said, her head still swimming too much for her to piece together any sort of useful question.

Johanna smiled. "Oh, you like it? It's been in my family for _years_. My mom called it 'the Heart of Viridian', since my family's also been in Viridian City for, you know...years."

Risa nodded. "V-Viridian City?"

"Yep. Like...in Kanto?"

"Oh." Kanto. Did that mean anything? "Then why're you here?"

The older girl laughed. "Because I already got all the Kanto badges, silly! I'm here to train. See?" She stuck a thumb behind her, and Risa finally got a look at her surroundings. Johanna was squatting in front of her, and they were both on a grassy patch outside one of the crumbling Ruins of Alph buildings. Behind Johanna sat a tall rhydon and a nidoqueen. "I'm good with ground-types. Those two have been with me since the beginning."

Risa blinked, staring at the powerful pokemon. Then... "Wait! Where are my pokemon?"

Johanna pointed down at the grass, where Risa's backpack lay. "Did you try your backpack?"

Diving at the backpack, Risa ripped open the main compartment and immediately found two filled pokeballs - Heat's and Nanimo's, perfectly fine and safe inside. She breathed a sigh of relief, then put her hand back in the bag, pulling out the grimoire.

She held it up to the evening light, staring at it.

"What's that?" Johanna asked, peering over Risa's shoulder to look at the book. "It looks kinda...weird. And old."

"Yeah," Risa said, rubbing her forehead. Her headache would just not go away, and she vaguely wondered if it had something to do with the book. "It's a really weird, old book. It's in some weird language, too."

"Like, the language they based off the unown?"

"No," the younger girl said, putting the book back in her backpack. "It's a weirder language than that." She shivered. "It's a...very weird book."

Johanna giggled. "Yeah, you said that already. So, do you need any help? Like, with camping out?"

Risa shrugged. "Maybe...I dunno..."

"Well, I'm pretty good at outdoor cooking, so -"

"Actually," Risa interrupted, her stomach rumbling at the idea of a cooked meal. "Camping out with you would be great."

The older trainer smiled and stood up, extending a hand to Risa. "I found a nice campsite right outside the ruins on Route 32. We can sleep there for the night."

Risa took Johanna's hand and stood up, though she almost fell backwards when she did. She took Johanna's hand and staggered out of the Ruins of Alph, not looking back.

When they started to set up camp - or, rather, when Johanna and her team set up camp while Risa sat around - all Risa could think about was that she had fourteen days left.

Two weeks.

She could _totally_ handle two more weeks.

Risa sighed.

She totally couldn't handle two more weeks.

---

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon.

Author's Note: Johanna isn't technically based off of anybody, although hypothetically, she could be a specific person in the game. Oh, and I hope the writing quality in this chapter isn't too bad - I am on pain medication, since I got my wisdom teeth out, and I don't know if that's going to hurt my writing or not. Hopefully this chapter wasn't too bad!


	16. Flame of Viridian

**Chapter 16: Flame of Viridian**

"Hey, how're you feeling today?"

Risa groaned, opening her eyes to see Johanna staring down at her yet again. She rubbed her eyes, letting Johanna help her sit up. "Okay, I guess...better than yesterday."

She and Johanna hadn't left their campsite during the previous day - when Risa woke up that morning, she felt too nauseous to stand. Johanna and her team had offered to stay with her until she got better, and she gladly accepted, grateful for Johanna's help.

Or, rather, she was grateful for Johanna's cooking. Apparently, Kanto schools taught their students how to cook outdoors, whereas Johto schools just sort of said, "you'll need food. Don't run out. Okay, have fun, bye!"

But Johanna as a non-cooking entity was pretty cool, too. She was seventeen, placed pretty well in the Kanto Pokemon League, and worked part-time back in Viridian City for her mother's software company. Her pokemon were pretty nice, too, especially her hypno, who would tell Risa funny stories to take her mind off the nausea.

She also knew a few things about raising tricky pokemon, and since Risa firmly believed Nanimo was one of these "tricky pokemon", she tried to hang onto Johanna's every word in regards to that.

Johanna smiled and held out a packaged pastry. "I bought a few of these when I was in Violet City. You look like you could use the blood sugar."

"Thanks," Risa said as she took the pastry and unwrapped it. When she bit into it, it tasted heavenly, sugary and light and with a hint of...of...

What _was _that?

A hint of something...

Risa frowned.

It seemed...familiar somehow. But not familiar in a sense that she'd tasted it before - it tasted normal, like some kind of berry or fruit, and she probably _did_ taste it before.

But that wasn't why it felt familiar.

She swallowed and suddenly felt everything around her go cold. Shivering, she looked up at the sky.

Cloudless.

It was a brilliant blue, cloudless sky.

But when she squinted, Risa was sure she could see...something.

Clouds - but _not_ clouds.

"Beatrice..." she whispered, and the clouds (or whatever they were) disappeared.

"What?" Johanna asked, leaning in and looking a little concerned. "Are you okay?"

Risa blinked a few times, her mind feeling unusually blank. "Y-yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"Um, maybe because you just started looking up at the sky all weirdly? Like - super spacey," Johanna explained, doing her best slack-jawed staring impression. "And you said something about some girl named 'Beatrice'."

"Beatrice?"

"Yeah. You know, what you just said?"

Risa frowned. "Who's Beatrice?"

Groaning, Johanna stood up. "I don't know! You're the one who said it!"

"But..." Risa shivered again, though she didn't feel cold. She put the pastry down - she didn't want to eat it anymore. "I didn't say anything about 'Beatrice'..."

---

Later that day, Johanna and Risa were walking along the path south, flanked by Johanna's new smeargle, Picasso, and Heat. Nanimo hadn't wanted to come out of her pokeball, and the rest of Johanna's pokemon weren't good for endurance hiking, were resting, or both.

Picasso, Risa noticed begrudgingly, seemed perfectly normal and easy to get along with. Of course, Johanna had more experience with newly-caught pokemon, but still...why did Risa have to get stuck with either already-owned pokemon or ones that kept telling her that she was going to die?

"So," Johanna said finally, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "You're gonna go back to middle school in a couple weeks?"

"Yup," Risa replied, looking over at Heat to see if he'd heard. He just glared back up at her. "Um, I'm planning on it."

"Cool," the older trainer said, flipping her red hair out of her eyes. "Are you gonna do more training next summer, or something? That's what you kids do in Johto, right - you train a lot during the summers?"

Risa shrugged. "I mean - yeah, a lot of people do that, but I dunno if I'm -"

"_YES, YOU ARE._"

"Well, I guess I might, but -"

"_YES, YOU ARE._"

"I think I'll just stay in school -"

"_YES, YOU ARE - wait..._" Heat growled. "_You tricked me!_"

His trainer grinned. "It's not like it was that hard."

"_Stupidhead._"

"Um, _you're _the stupidhead," Risa grinned, "you're the one who fell for it."

Heat just growled and started muttering to himself, hanging behind and walking next to Picasso. Picasso patted him on the back, but Heat just shrugged him off.

"Anyway...so you're gonna try and go for the Hive Badge, right?" Johanna asked, trying to avoid any serious arguments between Risa and Heat.

"Uh-huh."

"Me too," replied the girl, pointing over her shoulder at Picasso. "I'm doing the Second's League, so I think I'll be using Picasso, too."

Risa frowned. "Second's?"

"Yeah, you know," Johanna prompted, making "prompting" motions with her hands. "The league for people who come from Kanto - Kanto has the same thing, kinda. I fight either two-on-two, four-on-four, or six-on-six single battles using half pokemon that I trained before and half that I caught in Johto. So it's like...half of the pokemon are freshly caught, and the other half are seasoned."

"Oh," Risa said, vaguely remembering a couple people talk about it when they set up the league a few years ago. Living away from the gym action didn't really create a gym-centric community, and people in New Bark Town only ever really watched the league finals on TV. "So, uh, is that what you did against Faulkner?"

Johanna nodded. "Yep. I used my rhydon from Kanto and a geodude I caught here. I'm probably gonna use my nidoqueen against Bugsy, since she's immune to poison-type attacks."

"Wait - Bugsy uses poison-types?" Risa said, suddenly panicking a bit. "I thought he used bugs!"

"Uh, yeah, but some of them use poison-type attacks." Johanna shrugged. "Like his beedril - or, I guess, you'll be seeing his kakuna..."

Risa bit her lip. Poison-types were tricky - she hadn't gone up against many of them, but some of the weedles' poison stings back on Route 30 were hard to defend against, especially when they poisoned Heat. Now she had to go up against the evolved form of one?

Johanna seemed to sense Risa's panic. "You have two pokemon, right?"

"Yeah."

"You'll be going up against three pokemon when you fight Bugsy, most likely. That means you're allowed to use up to three pokemon to beat him."

"...Yeah?"

"So," Johanna said, flipping open a PDA and tapping the touchscreen a few times. "You might wanna catch one of these - they're wild in this area."

She held up the screen, showing a picture of a medium-sized purple snake. "An ekans?" Risa asked, recognizing the picture from her pokemon training classes at school. "You think I should catch an ekans?"

"Why not? Your cyndaquil is great offensively, but for Bugsy's kakuna, you might want a better defensive pokemon to handle Kakuna's poison-type. If your cyndaquil gets poisoned, it might be harder to fight off his other two pokemon, like his scyther. But if you catch an ekans, then it can't get poisoned at all; you just use the ekans to take care of Bugsy's poisonous bugs, and then use your cyndaquil or your unown - you said it had an ice-type hidden power, right? - for the rest."

Risa nodded. That did make a lot of sense, and an ekans might be a good pokemon to have later on. After all, if Bugsy could take advantage of poisoned opponents, so could she - or, at least, she could as long as she wasn't going up against a poison-type opponent. Or a steel-type. But any other...

"Sounds good," Risa said, turning back to face Heat. "If you see an ekans, tell me, so we can catch it." Maybe she'd catch one, and it would turn out to be _normal_.

Heat rolled his eyes. "_I can beat up a bunch of bugs by myself._"

"I don't care. Just tell me if you see an ekans."

"_...Fine._"

---

By the end of the day, they had not seen a single ekans. Johanna, on the other hand, managed to capture an aipom that she found in a tree her nidoqueen shook down. She also showed off Picasso's two sketched attacks: earthquake and air cutter.

Just as they were about to set up camp, though, Johanna got a phone call.

Risa listened to Johanna's half of the conversation as she played tic-tac-toe on a game board drawn in the dirt with Johanna's hypno, Zen.

"Really? ... Only in Cherrygrove? You can't come - oh, yeah, huh. ... You're going to take the test tomorrow? Then why - awww, that's so sweet! Yeah, sure, but - no, no, I taught it to a skarmory I caught a couple weeks ago. ... Yeah, I'll come. ... Don't worry! I can take a day or two off! ... I love you, too!"

"Who's she talking to?" Risa whispered to Zen.

"_Probably her boyfriend,_" the hypno replied through telepathy, drawing an "X" in one of the side squares and winning the game. "_He's back in Viridian City. They've been together for two years now, but have known each other for much longer. He's very nice, but kind of..._"

"Kind of what?"

Zen grinned. "_Nerdy. He loves fossils and science and weird things like that. He's really bad at fashion, too - he tried to give Johanna a dress for her birthday, and he got her this weird orange-and-dark-blue tent. Even I knew it wouldn't look good on anyone._"

Risa sniggered, trying to imagine such an ugly dress on Johanna, who probably didn't look good in orange at all. The only thing Johanna had going for her in terms of a shapeless orange-and-dark blue monstrosity was that she was pretty thin, meaning she could pull off a lot of things by that alone.

But orange-and-dark-blue?

Nope.

"She returned it, right?"

"_Oh yeah. Managed to get a nice black dress instead. You know - something classy. Not clownish._"

Risa laughed again, suddenly seeing an image of Johanna with a bright red clown nose walking around in orange and dark blue.

"What's so funny over here?" Johanna asked as she walked over. Risa shut up immediately, though the funny image in her head didn't go away. "You gonna let me in on the joke?"

"Um, no..."

"_Nope. Sorry._"

Johanna rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Listen - Zen. Gio's taking the test tomorrow."

"_Tomorrow?_" Zen asked, frowning. "_I thought he was scheduled to take it in two weeks._"

"Yeah, well, the committee said they'd rather have him test sooner," Johanna replied with a shrug. "But he's going to be in Cherrygrove tonight, since he was at the bookstore there - you know, the really big one? - and he wanted us to swing by." She looked down at Risa with an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, but we're gonna have to leave you for one night."

Risa sighed. No tasty dinner for her. "That's okay."

"Thanks," Johanna said, taking out two pokeballs. "I figure I'd just use Moro to get there, so Zen?"

"_Alright,_" the hypno said, taking the hint. "_Bye, Risa - it was nice beating you in tic-tac-toe._" And with that, he disappeared into his pokeball in a bright red flash.

He was replaced seconds later by a skarmory. Johanna swung her leg over the bird's side, sitting down on his metal back between his wings. "Maybe we can meet up in Azalea," she said as her skarmory began to flap his wings.

"Yeah," Risa said glumly, waving goodbye. "Oh - what test is your boyfriend taking?"

"He's taking the gym leader test," Johanna yelled over the metallic screeching of her flapping skarmory. "The one for the Viridian City Gym. He wants to make it a ground-type gym."

"What's his name?"

Johanna grinned, the setting sun reflecting for a moment against her light green ring. "Giovanni!"

With that, Johanna's skarmory shot off into the night sky, heading west.

Risa frowned. "Giovanni?" she asked, her head beginning to hurt. "But - I thought...didn't he?"

She doubled over, holding her throbbing head.

Once the pain began to subside, she reached into her backpack and took out the grimoire, opening it and looking at the incomprehensible writing on each page.

When she looked up, she saw a flash of purple shoot through the evening.

"An ekans?"

But when she squinted, she didn't see a snake.

She saw a small, four-legged mammal with a split tail.

"Espeon..."

The espeon's eyes glittered coldly, and it bore its teeth, growling a bit.

Then it bounded away into the brush, leaving Risa alone in the evening with a headache and the vague sense that something was not right in the world...

Twelve days left.

---

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon.

Author's Note: Sorry this is so late! I got hit by major writer's block. Bleh...


	17. No Firewood

**Chapter 17: No Firewood**

"Ember!"

The bellsprout shrieked as Heat burnt it to a crisp, and it fell down with a light "thud".

Risa sighed. That was the fifth bellsprout they'd run into that day. She wasn't really complaining about it, since both Heat and Nanimo had offensive advantages, meaning it didn't take long to defeat the bellsprout hordes, but still...

She was _trying_ to catch an ekans.

The least the wild ekans population could do for her was have an ekans _actually show up_.

Nanimo floated over to her trainer, her eye somewhat glazed over in boredom. "_That was the fifth bellsprout we've seen today._"

"I _know_, Nanimo," Risa grumbled, stomping off down the route.

"_What exactly are you looking for, again?_"

"An ekans. You know...like...a purple snake? That kind of thing?"

"_I see. And what do you need this 'ekans' for? What purpose will finding one serve?_"

"Um, so I can catch one."

"_Yes, you said that before. But why do you need to catch one?_"

"So it'll be easier to beat Bugsy and get that stupid second badge so I can go home." Risa glared at her unown. "Duh."

Her unown glared back, her single eye looking twice as menacing as two eyes could together. "_Is that your only goal?_"

"Well, yeah - oh," Risa said, remembering back to one of their previous conversations while stuck in the Ruins of Alph. "Saving the world. Riiiiiight. That too."

Nanimo narrowed her eye, looking suspicious. "_You don't sound incredibly sincere._"

Risa groaned. "Yeah, well, not many middle schoolers get told that they have to go save the world! You don't even know what we're supposed to save the world _from._ It makes no sense." She paused, then: "so, um, you want to tell me what I'm supposed to save the world from?"

The unown stared ahead blankly. "_No._"

"Um, is that a 'no', like...you don't know? Or you just don't wanna say?"

Nanimo didn't answer. The bush ahead of them rustled, and out popped - surprise, surprise - yet another bellsprout. Risa's unown shot forward, sending a barrage of icy energy spheres at the plant.

The grass-type shrieked and tried to wrap its vines around the unown, but she was too fast. She spun out of the bellsprout's grasp, sending a hidden power into the plant's mouth.

The bellsprout shuddered and fell, twitching and shivering. All Nanimo had to do was send another hidden power slamming down on top of the poor thing, and it was unconscious.

"Um," Risa said, eyeing the still bellsprout. "Good job...?" Perhaps flattery would convince the unown to give her some information about the whole "world-saving" thing she was allegedly supposed to be doing.

Once again, her unown stayed silent, opting to simply float along down the path. Risa and Heat exchanged a quick glance. "_We're still keeping her?_" the cyndaquil grumbled.

"Heat!" Risa hissed, trying to stay quiet. "Don't say that! She could've heard you!"

Heat shrugged, and the two of them jogged to catch up with the floating letter D. They walked (or hovered) in silence, save for when a wild bellsprout or - if they were lucky, a rattata or hoppip - ambushed them. Risa sort of liked the quiet, since it allowed her to enjoy the scenery. Route 32 had an abundance of lush plant life (probably leading it to become such an ideal spot for the annoying wild bellsprout population), a roaring river, jagged rocks and hills, and a bright blue sky above it all.

Just because Risa didn't really want to be a _trainer_ didn't mean she didn't like traveling _outdoors._

But that didn't matter, because she _was_ on a training journey and a young boy with a blue baseball cap, a white shirt, and shorts the color of his cap was running towards her, a pokeball in his outstretched hand.

Risa paled.

She knew that look on his face - it meant he was a trainer that wanted to battle. And since she had both her pokemon out next to her, not only did it automatically flag her as a ready-to-be-challenged trainer, but it gave any potential challengers an edge because they knew what her team was.

"Hey! I challenge you!" the boy declared as he came within earshot. "I challenge you to a pokemon battle!"

Risa groaned, cursing Heat and Nanimo for being in battling condition. That meant she _had _to battle. "Fine. Rules?"

"Um," the boy said, glancing at her unown and cyndaquil. "I only have two pokemon..."

His tone of voice made it clear that what he really wanted to know was if Risa had any pokemon other than the unown and cyndaquil. Risa sighed. No use lying, especially since it would only take a second for the boy to catch her lie. "Same."

The boy grinned. "Single battle, two pokemon each! No switching!"

"Fine."

"Go, Ratty!" The other trainer dropped the pokeball in his hand, revealing a purple rat with large teeth. "Oh, I'm Albert. You can call me Al."

Risa nodded, taking a deep breath. A rattata. She could do this. Both Heat _and_ Nanimo had beaten rattatas before. Granted, they were wild, and this rattata probably had at least _some_ training behind it, but still. "I'm Risa. Um, Nanimo, I choose you."

Her unown floated forward, staring down at the rattata with her one eye. Ratty glanced back at his trainer, obviously a little confused as to what exactly he was fighting. Al shrugged. "Dunno. Never seen that pokemon b'fore."

The rat shrugged, then jumped forward when Al ordered a quick attack. Risa gaped at the rat's astonishing speed and accuracy, watching it slam right into Nanimo's single eye.

Nanimo shrieked and flew backwards, shaking a bit before sending her signature freezing energy spheres towards the rattata. The attack caught the rat off guard, scoring as much of a critical hit as his quick attack had on Nanimo, throwing him back and making him shiver when he got up.

"An ice-type?" Risa heard Al mutter. She tried her best not to grin - he was making the same mistake she did when she first battled the unown clouds. "Um...try a tail whip."

Staying back at a safe distance, Ratty lashed his tail back and forth, keeping his beady eyes locked on Nanimo. The unown twitched slightly, distracted and unnerved by the lashing tail. "Um, hidden power again!" Risa said, though she knew she really didn't need to. It wasn't as if Nanimo had any other attacks to pick from. Nevertheless, Nanimo shot out another swirling pack of ice spheres, most of which collided with the rattata on the other side of the battlefield.

Al frowned, then ordered a bite attack. Risa only had time to blanche, as Ratty used his speed to rocket forward and sink his teeth into the right side of Nanimo's body, right on the black curved half of the "D". Nanimo shrieked, wriggling until the rattata let go, but by then it was too late.

She still had enough energy to keep fighting, but Al saw the amount of damage the attack caused. A grin spread across his face, and Risa watched in horror as he put two and two together. "It's a psychic-type!" he exclaimed, and Ratty grinned in response.

"Get away -"

"Pursuit!"

Nanimo tried to move to the side, but Ratty used it to his advantage, locking in on her movements and shooting forward. He slammed into her eye, sapping her of her energy and slamming her into the ground below.

The unown, not exactly from the strongest species to begin with, lost consciousness upon impact.

"Hah! We won the round!" Al cheered, jumping up and down in a little victory dance.

Risa bit her lip, returning Nanimo to her pokeball and glancing down at Heat, who had been remarkably silent during the battle. "Um, y-you ready?"

The cyndaquil smirked. "_Come on. It's a rat. And I'm no freaky letter thing._"

He scampered onto the battlefield and took a deep breath. Risa noticed the smoke seeping out of his fire glands before Al did, closed her eyes, and put her hand over her nose and mouth.

Heat jumped forward, getting up close to Ratty. By the time Ratty opened his mouth to bite down on the cyndaquil, Heat exploded a thick cloud of dusty smoke out of his fire glands, blowing an additional mouthful out into Ratty's face. Al coughed and gasped as both Heat and Ratty disappeared from his view, though Risa could see Heat wriggling out from the smoke cloud back onto her side of the battlefield.

He grinned at her and winked one of his squinty eyes.

She chuckled a bit, feeling a little better. Even if Nanimo went down, that was just because she had a type disadvantage. Heat had been training for longer than her, anyway, _and_ he had more attacks to choose from.

They could still win this.

"Ember?" she whispered.

"_Ember._"

He turned back to the rattata, who was swiping at the air with his eyes half-closed. Heat dashed up close and spat a barrage of hissing embers into the rat's face, then onto his underbelly when he reared up to try and fight back.

Ratty tried to run forward with a quick attack, but Heat only had to step a little to the right to cause the rattata to miss completely. "Tackle!" Risa ordered, and watched with glee as Heat threw himself against the small rat, knocking him unconscious.

Al grimaced, returning his rattata and wiping his eyes, which hadn't been closed when Heat released the smokescreen. "Fine. Batty!"

As their opponent threw his second (and last) pokeball onto the makeshift battlefield, Heat looked back at Risa. "_Is he serious? Ratty...and Batty? Even your names aren't that bad._"

"Oh shut up," Risa muttered as she sized up Al's zubat, annoyed at herself for not saving Nanimo for later. If Nanimo weren't unconscious, she could use her ice-typed hidden power to their advantage. But no, she had to be stupid and send Nanimo out against the rattata with _dark-type attacks._ She chewed her lip, then said, "flash."

Heat braced himself as the zubat flitted closer, Al having ordered a leech life, and when the bat drew close, he ignited his back. The zubat squealed and missed her target, though she regained her composure and managed to fly over towards her trainer without colliding with anything.

Al frowned. "Fine, you wanna lower my accuracy?" Risa wanted to tell him no, she didn't want to lower his accuracy, she wanted _Heat _to lower _Batty's_ accuracy, but she kept her mouth shut. "Batty! Supersonic!"

"Heat! Cover your ears!"

But it was no use - Batty's shrieking came through Heat's paws and plunged into his ears, causing him to shudder. Even Risa had to sink down onto one knee, holding her throbbing head. "G-guh -"

"Now! Wing attack!"

Unfortunately, Batty _didn't _miss this time, and her sharp little blue-and-purple left wing smacked Heat right square on his forehead. He moaned, shaking his head and looking twice as dizzy as before.

"Heat!" Risa yelled as Batty dove down for another wing attack. "Try an ember!"

Heat opened his mouth at precisely the wrong time - Batty's wing smacked his jaw right as the embers began pouring out, causing him to accidentally swallow them. He squealed, rolling around on the ground, moaning about his stomach.

Al grinned. "We're winning now! Batty, use bite."

The little zubat dove down again, sinking her teeth in Heat's exposed underbelly. He screamed and flailed, but no matter what, he couldn't hit her. She bit down harder, blood dribbling out around her teeth, and finally, Heat slumped down onto the ground.

Risa's jaw dropped - Heat lost? To a _zubat?_

"Yes! We won, we won!" Al yelled, punching the air and dancing around as Batty flew back over to him, complaining in her zubat chatter about something - apparently, Al didn't have any sort of translation machine. As he recalled her, he looked back over to Risa, who was fumbling with Heat's pokeball. "Hey - um, you gotta pay me."

"R-right," mumbled the girl, fishing out some cash and all but dropping it when Al stepped over to take it from her. She numbly returned Heat to his pokeball, wallowing in her defeat at the hands of a boy with shorts that matched his baseball cap.

Al shrugged at her silence, muttering a simple "well, see ya" before heading in the direction of Violet City.

Risa sighed, sitting down on a nearby boulder and putting Heat and Nanimo's pokeballs on the rock next to her. Glancing up at the sky, she realized that it was already late afternoon, and she had just practically wasted a day battling random bellsprouts she didn't want and losing to some guy with pokemon named "Batty" and "Ratty".

"Whatever," she muttered to herself. "Guess I'll just camp here." Even though the sun wouldn't set for another couple hours, Risa didn't feel like making any more progress on her trek to Azalea Town. She just wanted to take a break, even if it meant camping on the same stretch of pathway that she just lost to Albert the shorts-wearer.

Slowly and silently she went about taking out various potions and revives, applying them in their digitized forms into the pokeballs to heal her fallen team.

---

The next day, Heat had more than bounced back. By the time they reached the fork in the road between the tall grass mountainside and the docks across the river, he had already decided that the zubat had only beaten him by luck, and that he would never again lose to a blind bat. (Who, for some reason, still fell under the effects of his light-based flash attack.)

Nanimo, on the other hand, seemed to take the defeat much more harshly. That, or she just happened to be in a bad mood the following day, perhaps because while Risa healed both of them back to fighting condition immediately following the trainer battle, she didn't actually release either of them from their pokeballs until the next morning. Either way, Nanimo seemed to be a lot snippier with both Risa and Heat post-morning after.

In fact, all three of them were locked in a heated argument when they reached the fork.

"_I say we go in the tall grass area, because that's where the pokemon are! That's where I get to fight - AND I don't have to deal with stupid WATER,_" Heat snapped.

Risa nodded. "Yeah, you know, I really do want to catch an ekans."

"_We're wasting too much time with these trivial battles,_" the unown replied curtly. "_We should go across the docks._"

"_That's stupid! The grass path isn't that much longer! It'll probably take LESS time!_"

"_No, it won't. The docks will be shorter because we won't have to fight wild pokemon._"

"Um, we need to fight wild pokemon. We're supposed to be trying to catch an ekans, remember?"

"_We don't NEED an ekans._"

"Yes, we do. Remember that fight? The one we just lost? AGAINST A GUY WITH SHORTS THAT MATCHED HIS HAT?"

Heat looked up at Risa, confused. "_Wait - what's that got to do with anything?_"

"It's ugly."

"_Whyyy do you care?_"

"Because I'm a _girl._"

"_I'm a girl, and I most certainly do not care._"

"_You're not a REAL girl, though. You're some weird no-gender thing. You just THINK you're a girl._"

Nanimo growled. "_I. Am. Female._"

Heat sneered. "_No. You're. Not._"

"Heat, maybe you should -"

"_Whatever. Let's just go - both of US don't want to go on the docks, so that means we win,_" Heat said, already heading towards the first bit of tall grass on the land path towards Union Cave. "_We can catch a girl ekans just to show that weirdo what a REAL girl pokemon is._"

Risa glanced over at Nanimo, who looked livid. "Um, well, okay, but first we need to find an ekans. I'd take a boy ekans any day over no ekans at all..."

"_Oh, we'll find a girl ekans,_" Heat yelled, glaring at the floating unown. "_See? I'll even bet on it. If we get a girl ekans by the time we get to that cave-thing, you,_" he nodded towards Nanimo, "_have to admit that you're not really a girl, you're just a THING. And if we don't,_" he shrugged, "_I'll call you a girl. Heh, like THAT'S gonna happen."_

One look at Nanimo told Risa otherwise. "Heat.." she said nervously, backing away from the seething unown.

"_We'll see about that little bet of yours,_" Nanimo hissed before turning on Risa, slamming into her backpack and throwing the girl onto the ground.

"_Hey! You can't attack our - mmph!_" Heat yelled, but Risa, who managed to wriggle out of her backpack and run over to him, shut him up with a hand over his mouth.

"Maybe you should shut up before you say anything _else_ that's stupid," she hissed, glancing back at Nanimo's attack on her backpack.

The unown managed to freeze-rip open the pocket containing Risa's empty pokeballs, all of which she promptly beat with hidden power ice spheres until they shattered. Luckily for her, Risa kept the two pokeballs that captured Heat and Nanimo in a different pocket, meaning they were spared from the unown's wrath.

Nanimo then turned to Heat, panting slightly (though why, Risa couldn't tell, because it wasn't like she had any sort of mouth - Risa wasn't even sure if Nanimo breathed). "_Let's see you capture this ekans without any pokeballs._"

Risa bit her lip, part of her hoping that she accidentally put an empty pokeball in the main compartment of her backpack, though she doubted it. "Um, let's take the docks, then," she said quickly, picking up her backpack-sans-one-pocket and heading over to stand by Nanimo. "Heat, um, you - you coming?"

He snorted. "_Fine._"

Nanimo glared at him as he caught up with them. "_Well?_"

"_Well, what?_"

"_What am I?_"

Risa prayed to whatever higher power there was that he didn't do anything else to anger her unown. Her backpack could only take so much abuse.

Heat growled, pawed, at the dock, and said through gritted teeth: "_a girl._"

Then he stomped off ahead, muttering about freaky floating letters and stupid girl trainers, his back sizzling with fire.

Risa sighed. Ten days left.

---

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon. I am writing this merely for my own enjoyment.

Author's Note: I'm trying to get better at writing battles...so I decided to put a battle with one of the in-game trainers from Pokemon Crystal in this chapter. Youngster Albert really does exist, and he really does have a rattata and a zubat (though I bumped up their levels and used Platinum movesets). Oh - and it's not nice to say someone isn't the gender they identify with. Especially if they get violent when you say it. So if someone tells you a girl, just go with it, or your backpack may suffer.


	18. Brain Burn

**Chapter 18: Brain Burn**

"_Who are you?" Risa asked, her heart twisting in fear. In front of her stood the largest, strangest creature she'd ever seen, one that reminded her strongly of...something. But she just couldn't place that something._

_The creature stared down at her, showing no clear emotion. "I am Beatrice."_

"_B-Beatrice?"_

"_Do you know how to read the book?"_

_Risa looked down at her hands. She was holding the grimoire, though she hadn't noticed she was. "Um...no. It's in a weird, um, a weird language I don't know how to read."_

_Beatrice narrowed her eyes. "You do not know how to read it?"_

"_That's...what I said?" Risa asked, trying to edge away, but her feet wouldn't move. "Um, I'm sorry, but I don't know -"_

"_Then know. Or it will be your undoing."_

_Then the grimoire burst into flames, the burning red gem on its cover flying up and sinking into Risa's forehead. She only had time to scream before the flames consumed her and destroyed her body._

---

Risa woke with a start, her hands flying to her forehead. She breathed a sigh of relief when she felt her cool skin beneath her bangs, and slumped back against her sleeping bag's built-in pillow. When her heartbeat slowed to a more normal rate, she reached over and opened the flap on her tent to look out at the sunrise across the river.

Sleeping on the docks had been pretty peaceful, not counting her nightmare, and the view of the sunrise over the mountains in the east and the water below was definitely worth _something._ Risa couldn't help but smile - some of the views along her journey were gorgeous.

Her pokemon, though, were not gorgeous. Not in appearance nor, unfortunately, in personality.

Which was why they didn't sleep in the tent with her - no, no. They stayed in their pokeballs all night long, giving Risa her eight solid hours of peace, quiet, and uninterrupted sleep.

Or, at least, the chance to have eight solid hours of peace, quiet, and uninterrupted sleep. This new trend of nightmares _every single night_ was starting to wear thin on Risa. She _never_ had nightmares. Maybe a couple bad-ish dreams, but never anything in nightmare territory.

Sighing, the girl decided to eschew any chances of getting back to sleep, and began to shrug off her pajamas so she could pull on her shorts, t-shirt, socks, and shoes for the day ahead. After she was properly dressed for the world outside her camping tent, she packed away all her sleep ware (tent included) into the mess of item capsules in her backpack, then went about eating breakfast.

After breakfast, she took out her phone and decided to catch up on answering messages (since there happened to be service on Route 32), calling her parents to check in. When she hung up with them, she realized it had been over a month since she last spoke to her best friend from back home, so she called her up, too, though she had to leave a message.

Only after another hour of sitting at the dock, dangling her feet over the edge and staring at the scenery, did she even think of letting her pokemon out.

The docks were so _peaceful_. Why would she want to completely destroy that peace by letting Heat and Nanimo see the light of day?

Why?

_Why would she do that to herself?_

But, nevertheless, she did, because they _did_ have to eat. (Or, at least, Heat did. Risa wasn't exactly sure how or if Nanimo actually consumed the food she gave her.)

Risa sighed as both her pokemon appeared and almost immediately starting bickering. It would be another long day.

---

"Okay! You two! SHUT UP!" Risa yelled, glaring at Heat and Nanimo who had been - surprise, surprise - fighting over whether or not Nanimo had a gender. "Heat! You need to stop saying that Nanimo isn't a girl! It's not nice. And Nanimo! You need to stop fighting with Heat - I saw you throw that first hidden power."

Heat sniffed. "_Yeah, she started it._"

"Uh, no, Heat, you did. When you said she wasn't a girl."

"_Actually, he said that I didn't know anything about being a trained pokemon,_" Nanimo said icily, shooting a one-eyed glare down at the cyndaquil. "_He also added that I would never be much use in a 'real battle'. It devolved from there._"

"_What? She won't! All she'll ever be able to do is that stupid icy-thing - ow!"_ He glared back at Nanimo, rubbing his head where she hit him with an energy sphere.

Risa groaned. "Okay, you know what? There aren't any wild pokemon on these stupid docks, so I think it'll be waaay faster if I just put you two back in your pokeballs and walk by myself."

"_WHAT?_" Heat growled. "_No! That's stupid! I should get to stay out - put that stupid letter-thing away, not me!_"

The unown moved up and down in what Risa had come to view as a shoulderless shrug. "_I have no problems with this plan. I value efficiency,_" she added, giving Risa a knowing look. Risa shifted her weight uncomfortably, trying to figure out what sort of thing Nanimo was alluding to. She figured it had something to do with the vague "saving the world" thing she had to do, but other than that...

She had no idea.

"Well, I guess I'll see you two later," she said before Heat could cut in, zapping both of her pokemon back into their respective holding capsules. Sighing, she minimized both of the balls and put them back into her backpack, brushing her hand against the remains of one of the pockets. She thought back to how Nanimo had destroyed the pocket and its contents - all of her empty pokeballs - and shuddered. Would her unown do that to her if she failed to do follow instructions?

"Really super _vague_ instructions," Risa muttered to herself as she resumed walking down the docks. "Seriously, what does she -"

She stopped when she realized there was a fisherman sitting a few yards in front of her, completely within earshot of a majority of the previous squabble between her and her pokemon.

He looked to be somewhere in his late thirties, with a somewhat muscular body underneath waterproof khaki cargo pants and a white sun shirt. On his head sat a weathered old baseball cap, and in his hands was a fishing rod whose line sunk deep into the river below.

Once he realized Risa was staring at him, he glanced over at her and smiled sheepishly. "I guess you're realizing that I heard that."

"A-all of that?"

"Pretty much all of that," he said with a grin. "Having team troubles?"

Risa snorted. "Um, yeah, that's kind of putting it lightly." She paused, then added, "_really_ lightly."

The fisherman chuckled. "Well, I'm glad you decided to zap 'em back into their pokeballs, because their yelling was scaring away all the fish."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Risa said, feeling a bit embarrassed. As a trainer, she should have been able to keep them under control - oh, who was she kidding with the whole trainer thing?She didn't even want to be a trainer. The only reason she wasn't back in New Bark Town was her parents, who decided that all kids should have to go out and fight for badges. She never liked badges. She never wanted to get them - they were so stupid! All she wanted to do was stay in school with her friends and learn about science. She liked science. Science didn't involve dealing with annoying cyndaquils and unowns.

"What about annoying science professors?" the fisherman asked with a wry grin.

Risa blanched. "Did - did I say all that out loud?"

"Sure did. So, uh, you're a science kid?" he asked, glancing up at her.

She nodded. "Yeah, it was always my best subject back in elementary school. I mean - it's not like we did anything big, but I thought it was, um, kinda cool. Like learning about how the world works, and stuff."

"I have heard that pokemon training can be more art than science."

"I hate art."

"Ah, that might be a problem, then," the fisherman said as he tugged a bit on his fishing line. "Maybe you aren't flexible enough."

Frowning, Risa stepped over to the side of the dock and sat down a little bit away from the fisherman, to his right. Just because he seemed nice didn't mean he was a nice person. Just to be safe, she made sure both of her pokeballs were in her right hand. "What do you mean, 'not flexible enough'?"

He shrugged, pulling back his line and casting it out again, causing a small explosion of ripples in the water. "Just that sometimes, pokemon don't work the way you think they will. What kinda science do you like? Psychology?"

"Um, I'm in middle school. I don't think you get to do that until, like, high school..."

"Heh. Well, maybe you ought to look into it once you get there, then. Might do you some good to see where your teammates are coming from."

Risa glanced down at the minimized pokeballs in her hand, turning them over. "But they're pokemon. They don't think like us, right?"

The fisherman gave her the kind of sidelong glance that one gives when alluding to an inside joke. "What do you mean by 'us', exactly?"

Frowning, Risa tried to find the inside joke. "Um, humans?"

"Humans? Really?" He still had that look on his face, and Risa couldn't find the joke.

"Well, yeah. Pokemon and humans. What else would I mean?"

The fisherman chuckled. "I guess you're right. But are pokemon and humans really that different?"

"Yeah...I mean, you don't see any pokemon as trainers, right?"

"You don't?"

"No..." Risa frowned. "Or, at least, I've never..."

The man to her left looked up at the sky, watching the breezy summer clouds float by. "Do you have any goals? Goals that you would never want to give up on?"

Risa chewed her bottom lip for a moment, trying to think. "Well, I guess I really want to graduate high school and go to college. And become a scientist."

"That's very broad. There are many fields of science."

"Yeah, but - I dunno, I'm just a seventh grader! I don't know what kind of science to go into."

He nodded. "But you'll figure it out, right?"

"Right."

"Now, I want you to think about your two pokemon, the ones that were arguing."

Looking back down at the pokeballs in her hand, Risa said, "you mean Heat and Nanimo?"

"Yes - I assume Heat is the cyndaquil?"

"Yeah, and Nanimo's the unown."

"Huh, interesting names," the fisherman mused, dragging his fishing line a bit to the side. "Well, let's start with Heat. What goals do you think he has?"

"Oh, that's easy. He wants to become the Johto champion, or something like that."

"The way you say it makes you sound like you don't believe his goal can come true."

"Well, yeah! I can't go to the Pokemon League!" Risa exclaimed, making wild hand motions in the air. "I don't even _want_ to."

"Hm," Risa's companion nodded sagely, "and your other pokemon?"

"Um, she thinks I have to save the world, but she won't tell me what I have to save it from."

This seemed to surprise the fisherman somewhat, as he lifted an eyebrow and looked back over at the younger trainer. "Save the world?"

"Yep."

"I'm assuming that her goal of saving the world and your cyndaquil's goal of being a champion aren't exactly compatible."

"Um, no...I don't think so. Or, at least, _they_ don't think so," Risa groaned, leaning back. "Which is the big problem. They're so annoying and stubborn!"

"Is your goal compatible with their goals?"

Risa opened her mouth, then closed it. "Um...no."

"You don't sound particularly sure of yourself."

"I mean," Risa started, trying to form words from her feelings. "I don't think so. I don't want to be a trainer - I just want to go into science."

"Are you planning on going back to school once the summer is over?"

"Yeah."

The fisherman turned to give her a serious, unblinking stare, one that made Risa shrink back and try to look away. "Then what will you do with your pokemon?"

Risa blinked a few times. She really hadn't thought of that. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"Will you get rid of them? You say you don't want to be a trainer. Your cyndaquil sounds like he won't stand for being with a person that won't train him. Your unown might be fine with it, but her goal poses its own problems, anyway. Will you keep them?"

"Y-yeah, I mean - they're my pokemon, I have to, right?"

The fisherman shook his head. "You do not. Very rarely do you _have_ to do anything. But you need to keep in mind that there are consequences to every decision, even if that decision is to do nothing. At the end of your summer vacation, you will need to make a choice about what to do with your team." He peered down at her, and Risa could have sworn his eyes turned a darker, more intense brown than they had been before. "I strongly advise you to keep in mind those that might be hurt by your choice. This goes with your choice of what to do with your life after this summer - who will be hurt by your decision?"

"My decision?"

"To stay in school and become a scientist."

"Heat," Risa said glumly. "And probably Nanimo, too. Unless she wants me to save the world through science."

"She might," the fisherman said with a shrug. "But your cyndaquil might not want to stay cooped up in a laboratory all day. Perhaps," he added with a slight smile, "you might want to think about compromising."

"Compromising?"

"Finding a solution that will allow you to achieve your goal as well as letting your teammates achieve theirs. It might, after all, give them a reason not to bicker as much."

Risa thought for a moment. "Um, I don't think I can study hard to be a scientist, be a pokemon trainer, and save the world."

"Maybe. But you might need to think outside the box," he said, gesturing towards his fishing line. "Very rarely is there only one way to catch a fish."

Risa watched as he discreetly dropped a pokemon food pellet into the water directly under him, and almost a second later, a quagsire came to the surface to eat it. All the fisherman had to do was put more food on the docks, and the quagsire slowly climbed up, sitting down next to the fisherman to eat it. He smiled at Risa, who watched in awe as he patted the wild quagsire on the head. "I do not actually want a quagsire, but you get the idea. Sometimes you have to compromise and adjust the specifics of your goals. Don't you think it would be better to have your cyndaquil and your unown by your side? Or would you like to be alone when you study science?"

The little girl sighed. "I don't want to be alone."

The three of them sat for awhile, staring out towards the water (or eating the food, in the case of the quagsire). When the quagsire finished and dove back into the water, Risa stood up, pocketing the minimized pokeballs. "Um, thanks. You know...for - for the advice."

Her companion waved it off. "It was nothing. You looked like you could use some advice."

"Well, yeah," Risa muttered, "I guess I did. Um, but yeah...thanks."

She began to walk away down the docks, but the fisherman stopped her. "Wait - what was your name?" the fisherman called.

Risa turned. "Risa Miyamoto."

"Ah," the fisherman replied, frowning. "Do you have an English name?"

"Uh, I just use 'Lisa'."

The fisherman seemed to mull this over for a moment. "I don't mean to pry, but have you met anyone named Gold?"

Risa shook her head. She turned to leave, then remembered something. "Um, hey...do - do you know somebody named Giovanni?"

"Yes - isn't he one of the Kanto gym leaders? In Viridian City?"

"He is?" Risa frowned. That seemed correct to her, but... "Um...when? When did he become gym leader?"

"A few days ago, according to the news," the fisherman said with a slight smile. "Why?"

"N-nothing," Risa muttered, "it's nothing." She turned to leave again, but once again, stopped. "What - what about Beatrice?"

She cringed when she saw the suspicious glare she got in return from the fisherman. "Why?"

"Um - n-nothing," Risa said as she began to edge away down the docks. "I just heard somebody say that name - I think. Somewhere. Just - just wondering if you knew."

The fisherman frowned. "I do know someone named Beatrice, but I don't think - I doubt it's the one you're thinking of."

Risa nodded, thanked the fisherman for his time, and began to walk down the docks.

Once she was out of earshot, the fisherman checked to see if anyone else was around. Nobody - the docks were empty. He glanced back at Risa's retreating figure, then disappeared.

In his place hovered a small, shriveled, pink, embryo-like creature with barely-open blue eyes and no arms. She - because the creature was, in fact, biologically female - flew across the water to the grassy path that Risa had opted not to take.

When she landed, she immediately felt herself transform into a purple mammal, one that she instantly recognized. "_Mara_," she said through her newfound telepathy, glancing to her right as the espeon in question stepped out from behind a bush.

"_That was incredibly dangerous, Lyrisa,_" the espeon said coldly. "_Someone could have seen you._"

"_Nobody saw,_" the copy-espeon replied. "_But I did meet that girl you've been following._"

Mara flicked her split tail angrily. "_I fail to understand why exactly Beatrice trusts her._'

"_Maybe Beatrice knows something you don't._"

The espeon hissed angrily, causing a few weeds near her feet to shrivel and die. "_That is impossible! You forget, Lyrisa, that I am primary of the outsides. Beatrice is your ANCHOR._"

Lyrisa shrugged, glancing back in the direction Risa had gone off in. "_I highly doubt it is impossible. Power and knowledge aren't always the same thing._"

Mara bore her teeth, but said nothing more on the subject. "_Well?_"

"_Well...what?_"

"_Is she?_"

"_I doubt it. At least, not now._" Lyrisa sighed. "_Maybe that is why Beatrice -_"

"_Or it could be because she has the grimoire._"

"_Yes. I suppose._" The copier looked up at the sky. "_I do not like this._"

"_What?_"

The copied espeon shivered. "_There is something wrong. I think Beatrice knows. I think - I think something bad will happen._"

Mara rolled her eyes. "_You are just reacting to my clairvoyance._"

"_Maybe._" Lyrisa glanced back at her original. "_Darcy hasn't been able to leave the Distortion World in months, you know._"

"_Huh. I am not jealous._"

"_At least she has Georgiana to help her stay sane. I do feel very bad for her._"

"_Don't,_" Mara said with a flick of her tail. "_Focus less on others' welfare and more on your job._"

Lyrisa sighed, shaking her head. "_You know why I can't._"

"_And it vexes me._" Mara walked past Lyrisa and off towards Union Cave. "_Do your job, Lyrisa. Nothing too bad has happened yet. Don't let it._"

As she left, Lyrisa felt herself changing into a copy of a nearby female ekans, though she couldn't actually see the snake in question. She sighed, flicking out her tongue to taste the air. "_I wish I could go back to Sinnoh,_" she whispered before slithering off. "_But if the grimoire stays out of Sinnoh, then that might be best for the stability of it all._"

---

"Two, please," Risa said as she pushed two filled pokeballs across the counter towards the Pokemon Center nurse. "And, um, I need a room for the night."

The nurse, a youngish woman with black hair and dark eyes, nodded, slipping her pokeballs into the healing machine and placing a room key on the counter. "You'll be rooming with two other girls tonight," she told Risa in a scratchy voice. "We're a bit short on rooms, seeing as we're an outpost Center."

Risa took the key. "N-no, it's not a problem." As long as she had a bed to sleep in, Risa was fine with _anything._

As she padded up the stairs to put her things away before picking up Heat and Nanimo, she thought back to the fisherman she met the day before.

"Compromise," she muttered. "Yeah, right. _I_ might be able to compromise, but _they_ won't."

It hadn't - she had camped out at the end of the docks after talking to the fisherman (and had another nightmare about the grimoire eating her), then tried to work things out with Heat and Nanimo the following day as they hiked the remainder of the trail to the mouth of Union Cave.

Neither of them were keen on "goal sharing". Nanimo said they had to save the world as soon as possible, ignoring any other goal to do it, and Heat wouldn't let Risa be a scientist because he claimed it was stupid.

Which didn't exactly make Risa want to compromise with them, either.

She sighed. She really didn't want to just get rid of them at the end of her journey, because that just felt really mean. But she didn't want to have to deal with them harping on her for the rest of her life because she wanted to continue with school instead of going back out to train.

"Maybe I'll just make a decision when I go home," she said to herself as she unlocked the door to her room for the night. Her two roommates had their things on two of the beds, so Risa assumed they were downstairs eating dinner. Throwing her stuff on the remaining bed, she realized she had to make the decision about Heat and Nanimo's fate in eight days...

"A week and a day," she told herself. "I have a week and a day to decide."

---

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.

Author's Note: Mostly dialogue...sorry if that's not your thing. It was weird writing a chapter in which Heat barely appeared. He'll be back with a vengeance, though. :) Next chapter will be the start of the two-part Union Cave arc, which I hope everyone will enjoy.


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